


this one's for you

by andthelightbulbclicks



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Ficlet Collection, Post-Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2018-11-07 12:44:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 41
Words: 49,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11059236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andthelightbulbclicks/pseuds/andthelightbulbclicks
Summary: Hiatus challenge: one chapter a week, one thousand words, one true pairing.Ficlets glimpsing at those 2,199 days, and after...Week 41: I'm flirting with you.Week 40: What's with the box?Week 39: You don't have to stay.





	1. 64 - Talk to me.

**Author's Note:**

> So on top of it being hiatus time, it is also the start of summertime, which means I *should* have more time for writing :D I'll be posting other works, but I'm setting up this personal challenge to keep me writing somewhat consistently.... I'll be trying for weekly Wednesday postings. Key word: trying.
> 
> I'll be pulling quote prompts from [this post](http://promptsofthewriting.tumblr.com/post/148795840779/writing-prompts), which pretty much all scream Bellarke pretty loudly. Feel free to [send me a number](http://andthelightbulbclicks.tumblr.com/askbox) if you're rooting for one. If not, I'll just keep picking ones that suit my fancy.

“Come on, come on, come _on_ , Clarke!”

Clarke lets out a breath – part amusement, part exasperation, part nervous energy – as she trails behind Madi. The closer they get to the edge of the green, the more restless Madi gets.

And the more anxious Clarke becomes.

“They could have come down already and we _missed it_ ,” Madi continues impatiently as she breaks through to the clearing – their clearing. The one that’s been the setting for hundreds upon hundreds of radio calls at this point, all left unanswered.

“I bet you we’ll be here until the sun goes down, just so they can come flying through the night sky in style,” Clarke calls out to her, making her own way through the green grass.

She hears Madi snort. “And I bet they’re already making their way towards the green because _someone_ had to make sure we ate before we left.”

At that, Clarke lets out a small chuckle, the kind only Madi can get out of her. She feels the swell of pride she always gets when listening to Madi speak, she’s come such a long way since Clarke found her that first year. She tries to focus on that lightness as she lugs the satellite out to its normal spot, right behind where Madi has settled, watching the sky intently.

Clarke dares to take her own peak at the sky, seeing clear blue.

Nothing at all but clear blue.

She lifts the radio, centering herself and clicking the button.

“Bellamy,” she starts, like always. “It’s been 1,825 days.”

Madi turns around to watch her at her words, encouraging smile on her face.

“Today’s the day,” Clarke finds herself saying breathlessly. “Five years to the day.”

Clarke has to pause at that.

_Five years_.

She never truly understood that length of time until she had to count every single day of it to stay sane.

She releases the walkie’s button, waiting.

Just like every other day, no response comes.

So, she continues. “I’m pretty sure the air’s been safe for the past couple of months, but I get it. You guys wanted to wait, just to be safe. I’d say the same thing if I was up there with you. Wouldn’t want you guys breathing in toxic air.”

Another quick glance at the sky, still nothing.

“But I promise, it’s safe now. I mean, our green spot is really all there is right now, but the animals are coming back. The sky is blue, just waiting for a ship full of delinquents to break through it,” she adds, unable to contain the hope in her voice. “So Madi and I are making a day of sky watching and radio chatting, assuming that you guys have to launch at a certain time of day in order to get to us and not end up on the wrong continent.”

Clarke watches Madi as she lays back in the grass, settling in for the day they have been counting down to for years.

One more release of the button, one more gap of silence that should be filled by his voice.

She clicks once more. “Like I’ve said, aim for our little corner of green in the world. We’ll be waiting,” she can’t help but add before walking over to plop down next to Madi, walkie and radio never leaving her side.

“Now we wait?” Madi asks, excitement lighting up her eyes.

Clarke wraps her arm around her, pulling her in tightly, reassuring herself that she’s not alone. “ _Sha, strik natblida_. We wait.”

* * *

Morning turns into midday, midday blends into dusk, dusk falls to night.

Still, no ship in sight.

“Wow, I was only half-joking when I told Madi you wanted to come down in style. You better hurry before she falls asleep, she won’t be happy if she misses her first look at the ship.”

Still, no response to be heard.

But Clarke refuses to let herself waver, even as Madi starts to nod off in the grass, anticipation leaving her hours beforehand.

“I’m not falling asleep,” she mumbles, right before her eyes fall shut.

Clarke just keeps watching the night sky, ignoring the way the stars seem to be mocking her.

* * *

The panic doesn’t truly set in until Clarke sees the sunrise the next morning. As the pink hues bleed into the sky, she can feel fear start to seep into every part of her body, her soul.

She withheld talking to him throughout the night, trying not to wake Madi. But at the first glimpse of the sun, Clarke can’t wait a second longer. She’s waited for too many goddam seconds.

She clicks the walkie.

“Bellamy?”

Release, wait. When Clarke hears nothing for the 1,826th day, dread settles like a weight.

Click again.

“ _Bellamy.”_

Release, wait. Her hand starts shaking, making the walkie tremble in her grip.

Click again.

“Bell…,” she starts desperately, “talk to me. _Please_.”

Clarke hears the distress in her voice, knows that she’s begging at this point. But it’s been _five years_. She’s talked to him for five years, stayed alive for five years, hoped and fought and dreamed for five years.

They are supposed to be here after five fucking years.

“Did I miss it?”

Madi’s voice cuts through Clarke’s panicked haze, drawing her out of her own mind. Clarke turns to Madi, watching as she sits up groggily, rubbing her eyes and immediately searching the sky.

A sky that is so painfully empty.

She looks away from Madi as the young girl turns towards her, trying to hide the gutting disappointment written on her face, the tears burning in her eyes.

“Clarke?” Madi asks, worry starting to creep into her words, “did I miss your friends landing?”

_Yes_ , she wants to say.

_Let’s go and meet them_ , is what she should be telling Madi right now.

Instead, what comes out is a scream five years in the making as she drops the walkie and radio onto the green ground.

She knows she scares Madi. Hell, she’s scaring herself.

It takes Madi only a moment more before she’s wrapping Clarke in her small arms, trying to contain Clarke’s wails in her small, determined body.

But nothing can stop this.

Because for the first time in 1,825 days, Clarke finds herself wondering if for the past five years, she’s been talking to the dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm saying 36 chapters right now for 36 weeks (yikes). That's going with assuming that Season 5 will be hitting us late January/early February with a January 31 premiere date.
> 
> But who's counting, right?


	2. 83 - Just once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So since these are all going to be ficlets, I'm going to be jumping around a lot in the timeline. That being said, we're taking it back right to the beginning...

Clarke feels the crazed panic racing through her as she slams into the entrance to Becca’s lab, trying to keep her hand over her ruined helmet.

She feels the terror pumping through her body as she stumbles down the hall, knocking things over blindly as she goes.

She _feels_ the radiation from Praimfaya quite literally eating her from the inside out. And it fucking _burns_.

She gasps for air, trying desperately to tear her helmet off of her head because it’s useless and she can’t breathe, and she’s _dying_.

Somehow, she finds herself laying sideways across the tiled floor of the lab, still gasping for oxygen that her lungs won’t allow in, coughing up black blood when her body is denied what it wants. Her world is spinning out above her, the burning crawling through every single point in her body as her skins alights like fire.

And then, she sees him. Ratty t-shirt, signature smirk, and all. Standing right next to her, just watching her.

 _It’s not him_ , her brain tells her.

 _He’s safe in space_ , her heart tries to remind her.

But she’s just glad he’s here, glad he’s the last face she’ll ever see. She’s dying and even Clarke’s radiated brain knows who she wants most.

It’s over.

She feels it, knows it. Accepts it, even.

So she just keeps staring at the Bellamy above her, unable to do anything more than keep her eyes on him, tears streaming across her burning skin, and take in her last moments.

And when that becomes too much, she closes her eyes.

 _Ai gonplei ste odon_.

* * *

Clarke wakes, lungs screaming for air. She coughs, chokes on whatever that awful taste is in her mouth. _Blood_ , she realizes. _Nightblood_ , clicks a second later.

She lays there, trying to recollect where she is, what’s happened. _You’re in Becca’s lab_ , she remembers. _You should be dead_.

And then, _Bellamy._

She jolts to a sitting position, and immediately regrets it as every movement she’s made punishes her with a searing pain across every inch of skin on her body. She whimpers as the skin contact with her suit chafes the boils and blisters she can’t see, but can definitely feel. She tries not to look at the ones on her arms that she _can_ see.

She needs to get out of this damn suit.

Clarke struggles, and crawls, and shimmies, and cries a whole lot as she works the suit off of her body. She yelps and screams, because hell, no one’s around to hear her. Every shift is a struggle, and her vision blacks out more than once from the pain, but minutes, hours, days later, she’s finally free of it.

Then, and only then, does she even allow herself a spare thought.

 _It worked. The nightblood worked_.

She allows herself two minutes of pure elation that it worked, which ultimately consists of her laying back on the tiled floor again, allowing the coolness to seep into her clothes and sooth her searing back as she smiles up at the fluorescent ceiling. Because, again, no one’s around to see her either. She’s _alive_.

And then it’s back to reality.

A reality where she’s the last human on Earth that isn’t sealed under the ground for the next five years or floating in Earth’s orbit for the next five years. Any way she looks at it, she’ll be damned if she’s not around when her mom comes out of that bunker, when Bellamy comes flying through the sky.

So, even though her body screams out in protest, she fights to stand. She fights to take a step forward, and another, and another. And she fights to make her way up too many stairs to count.

The world is on fire outside, but she’s going to survive it.

* * *

She finds the food first.

It won’t last her five years, maybe three months, four if she rations it to the extreme. But she just needs it to last her long enough for the Earth to start to settle, to allow her to go outside and scavenge anything that’s survived. Or to raid the mansion.

Same goes for water. She’ll make it work until she has other options. She _will_ have other options, eventually. There’s no other choice.

It’s when she’s dragging herself through one of the upstairs rooms, still searching for any helpful supplies, that her heart lodges in her throat. She looks around the room, remembers vividly the last time she was here, holding Bellamy so tight that maybe, just maybe, they couldn’t possibly be separated again.

Jokes on her, apparently.

Her eyes look past where she’s imagining her and Bellamy standing just hours (days?) earlier, to find one more piece of hope.

The radio.

She makes her way over to it, knowing it’s a lost cause. But, what if?

What if the lines cleared now that Praimfaya has passed?

What if they clear up in the days, months ahead?

Clarke radios the line that Bellamy had last used, speaking to Octavia. “Hello?” She asks, coughing a second later when her throat strains from disuse. “Can anyone in the bunker hear me?”

She doesn’t expect anything, but she still feels a wave of disappointment when the line remains dead.

Then, she switches the line to one she hasn’t used since talking to her mom, Jaha, and Kane when they were still in space. Back when they were all still at the Dropship.

“Hello?” She tries again. “Bellamy? Can you hear me?”

A second wave of disappointment, much stronger than the first, hits when only silence answers.

“Come in Ark,” she says more clearly. “If anyone can hear me, it’s Clarke,” she pauses, refusing to let her voice waver, “I’m alive.”

She doesn’t get a response, truly doesn’t expect one. Yet.

“Look,” she starts, clicking the radio again. “I get if you can’t respond right now, I’m sure you guys are crazy busy up there getting that thing up and functioning properly. But at some point, if one of you can respond back, that’d be great.”

She takes in the room around her again.

“It’s not like I’m going anywhere anytime soon.”

_Because she’s completely alone for the next five years._

“Once. I need to hear someone one time,” she says into the radio. “Just once. It can even be Murphy,” she jokes half-heartedly. Hearing Murphy’s voice would honestly be the happiest moment she’s had in forever. She knows they’re alive, they have to be. But the reassurance would be nice.

“Alright, well, same time tomorrow then,” she trails off, before placing the radio back onto the table. Maybe she can scavenge a radio manual from somewhere in the lab, fix something if it’s damaged.

But first, she needs to find a first aid kit. She’s not going to survive Praimfaya and then die from an infection.

She’s going to survive.

* * *

“Bellamy, it’s been two days since Praimfaya. Good news is I found some stuff to clean my blisters, so one point for Clarke. Bad news is there’s still 1,823 days before you all can come back. So, I guess 1,823 points for Earth. Screw you, Earth.”


	3. 36 - Did I say that out loud?

“You’ll never guess what I found,” Clarke says into the radio, her excitement clear to her own ears. “And no, it’s not a manual to fix anything with the radio or to improve transmissions or anything.”

She’s spent the past two months searching every last inch of the lab for something to help her figure out if the radio she speaks into every day is even working. If anyone can actually hear her. Because well, it’s been two months, and for all the conversations Clarke’s had on a daily basis, not one has received a response yet.

But her continued searching didn’t come up completely empty today.

After leaving the appropriate pause to give Bellamy, Raven, anyone the chance to respond, she continues on. “Charcoal! I found a whole box of charcoal and a sketch book buried in a desk in one of the offices,” she tells them eagerly. “Becca must have used it to sketch out rough ideas for her machines and stuff, because there’s a few pages in the beginning with things that Raven would definitely understand and I have literally no clue about.”

Clarke finds her hand not currently holding the radio running over the cover of the book in her lap reverently.

She’s been holed up in the lab for _two months_.

The worst of her burns have finally scabbed over, leaving tender, pink skin in their wake. The earth is still burning, forbidding her access to the outside. And she hasn’t heard another human voice since Praimfaya.

If she allows herself to acknowledge it, she’ll admit it. She’s _lonely_.

But finding the book, the charcoal? She feels herself the slightest bit reenergized. She _feels_ something, after starting to feel almost numb from the isolation.

She’s been walking around the lab like a ghost for weeks, refusing to lose hope as she talks to Bellamy, to them, every day. But she hadn’t realized the change in herself until now, and that scares her.

“Don’t worry Raven, I’ll save Becca’s sketches for when you get back down here,” Clarke reassures, as she opens the book, rips the used pages carefully from the seams and places them back in the desk where she found her treasures.

Once back on the couch, book and charcoal in reaching distance, she clicks the radio one last time for the day.

“Guys, I can _draw_.”

* * *

She starts with her dad.

Another thing she’s found that scares her, aside from the burning planet outside, is that she might forget what they look like.

How could she forget? How can people who mean the world to her, who she would do anything for, start to fade from her memory?

So she starts with her dad, drawing his smiling facing looking back at her and putting every single detail that comes to mind into the portrait. Because she _refuses_ to forget them, any of them.

When she finishes her father, she moves onto her mom. After her mom, Bellamy.

Raven, Monty, Miller, Murphy, Octavia, everyone she can possibly think of.

She does those she knows, deep down, are still alive.

She also draws those who she knows aren’t.

Jasper, Lexa, Wells, Lincoln, Roan, Luna, Finn, Sinclair, and so many more.

And throughout it all, every single day that she continues her portraits, she talks to Bellamy. She finds her days going easier, even talking to him while continuing drawing, commenting on who she’s drawing, what details she’s adding.

And that, more than anything, keeps her going.

* * *

“It’s so hard to capture her fierceness on paper,” Clarke explains while adding shading around Echo’s eyes, always the warrior.

“Tell her that she looks like an angry panda with her war paint on,” she adds when the realization hits. “Not that she would probably even know what a panda looks like. I’m sure there’s a book up there with a picture you can show her.”

She thinks that would get a laugh out of him, or at least an amused chuckle. She can’t, hasn’t laughed in what feels like years. She realizes then that she doesn’t know what Bellamy’s laugh even sounds like.

She tries to focus on the unimpressed look on Echo’s face as she listens to Clarke’s commentary instead.

* * *

“Murphy, I’m drawing your portrait with Emori’s.”

Clarke just added the last strokes to the tattoo on Emori’s face when she made the decision. “You two are a set, a pair. I’m imagining you two ransacking the Ark over the past couple of months finding all the parts that Raven and Monty need,” she tells Murphy as she starts in on the sharp edge of his nose, her own fingers black from the charcoal.

“So, you two get your own page. Partners on the ground, and up in space.”

She continues to draw, having Murphy looking out from the paper, like the whole world amuses him.

She ends up giving them another page too, one where Murphy’s looking like he only does when staring at Emori.

* * *

“Alright, this is my last page.”

She’s surprised the book lasted as long as it did. It’s kept her sane for a month and half. That, and talking to Bellamy.

“I think you’re going to be the subject of it,” she tells him, as her hand starts shaping the smooth curve of his jaw. It’s fitting, finishing the book with Bellamy. Not that he hasn’t made numerous appearances already.

“I’m starting with your jaw,” she describes, tracing out the rest of his face. “It’s so strong,” she adds mindlessly, “always reveals how you’re feeling whether you want to or not. I’ll add your freckles in later, there’s so many of them, so mesmerizing to look at, I have to get them just–”

Clarke pauses when her brain catches up with her mouth.

“Did I say that out loud?” She feels the alien feelings of a flush expand on her cheeks.

She sits up straight, staring down at her work so far.

She could blame her dwindling rations. They’re lasting her longer than they should, but she still can’t get outside yet, and the cut provisions could be messing with her head.

But she knows that’s not it.

She brings the radio back to her lips. “You’re so strong,” she starts, not knowing where she’ll end. “And they are so lucky to have you up there with them.”

Clarke finishes the drawing in silence, finds herself tracing over it unconsciously afterwards.

“I miss you,” she reveals into the radio after, as if it’s any sort of surprise. And then she calls it a day, both with drawing and talking. She’ll continue on with both tomorrow, like always.

She may be out of paper, but there’s decent amount of charcoal left and a whole lot of floor space for her to cover.


	4. 21 - That doesn't even make sense.

It’s when she hits the five month mark that Clarke finally acknowledges the fact that if she doesn’t leave the lab, she’s going to die.

It’d be one thing if it was out of boredom, but it has everything to do with the fact that she’s completely out of food. The rations have lasted her far longer than what they were meant for, with her eating maybe one full meal by the time each day is through.

But now she’s down to literal crumbs, and yesterday she found herself running her fingers across her ribs protruding under her skin. So it comes down to either possibly burning from the radiation levels outside or definitely starving to death in here.

And Clarke would much rather break free from the repetition of the last five months.

She’s made steady progress on her floor drawings, but it hasn’t had the same effect that the sketchbook gave her. Now, when she’s sketching the forest or the dropship or any of her friends or family, she can’t help but remember a time when she was trapped in a different type of cell, only thousands of miles up above in space.

She’s sick of feeling trapped.

That, and aside from food and freedom, she has another motivation to get outside, all having to do with the satellite she’s left sitting by the lab entrance.

And the damn radio manual she finally tracked down.

In a moment of pure curiosity, Clarke had tried booting up the computers one day, knowing that it was a long shot, and that the last time they were up and running she saw Praimfaya destroying everything in its path. But instead, she got a bunch of computers rebooting themselves.

And that, finally, is where she found the manual, telling her that the use of a satellite could amplify radio signals and selling her on the fact that she had to get out of this place.

She also found the computer system that had been tracking radiation levels before the big wave hit, and to her utter shock, seemed to be _working_.

“That doesn’t even make sense,” she had muttered then, simultaneously glaring at the computers and trying to tamp down the hope rising in her chest.

If the technology was able to survive outside, then why couldn’t she?

* * *

“So, I don’t _think_ I’m going to fry to death outside,” she begins speaking into the radio, “so I’m not going to say goodbye.” She takes one more glance at the radiation levels on the screen, then turns her attention towards the lab entrance. “If anything, if you can’t hear me yet, maybe getting outside with the satellite will change that.”

She grabs the coat she had found in one of the office closets, eyes catching on some of her floor sketches in the process.

“I don’t plan on going far, just to get some food from the mansion,” Clarke reassures him, anticipation starting to rush through her, “so I’ll tell you all about how everything is dead outside when I come back. No offense, but food has to take priority here, or else reading through that entire stupid manual will have been for nothing.”

She pauses when her eyes catch on the corner of floor she uses for Bellamy’s drawings.

“I’ll be back soon. I promise.”

* * *

She’s right, about everything being dead.

But thankfully, that doesn’t include her. She finds herself unintentionally holding her breath as she opens the door.

 _The air could be toxic_ , calls a memory in her head.

But she takes a breath, and another, and another… And nothing happens.

No suffocating, no coughing. She’s _fine_.

So she starts her trek to the mansion on the singed ground and through charred remains of trees, feeling alive with adrenaline while the whole world lays dead around her.

She tries not to be fascinated by the permanent orange sky.

* * *

It’s amusing how the mansion can survive two apocalypses and still look completely unharmed. But she supposes that’s the kind of luck there is in the world.

She makes her away into the kitchen, brushing away the image of Murphy offering her a taste of his cooking, and heads to the cabinets for any of the foods she saw there last time.

Despite the desire to take as much as she can carry, Clarke only grabs the minimum – a jar of peanut butter, some granola bars, crackers, and some bottled water. She can walk outside now, she’ll be able to come back anytime she wants, is her reasoning behind leaving the peaches and other jarred and canned foods.

Eventually, she could just move from the lab to the mansion.

But not today. She needs to report back her findings to her friends.

* * *

Clarke finds herself in a new routine after that.

Talk to Bellamy inside the lab, draw, check radiation levels, try reaching the bunker, get radio silence from the bunker, go for her walk to the mansion, talk to Bellamy again, this time outside using the satellite.

Repeat.

It’s a hell of a lot better than being locked in the lab, but she knows it’ll only be so long before the mansion’s supply runs out or her need to find any proof of the earth healing pushes her to wander off of the island.

A month later, she decides that she’s going to treat herself to the peaches. She’s been holding off on taking them, leaving them in the cabinet for when she _really_ wants them.

And today is that day. Before leaving for her walk, she used up the rest of her charcoal.

No more floor drawings either now.

She’ll probably treat herself to one of the boxes of candy while she’s at it too.

So she storms into the kitchen, whips open the cabinet door, reaches out her hand –

Only to find that the peaches are gone.

For a second, it doesn’t register.

She left the peaches there every single day, so the peaches should be there now.

She steps back, looks around the kitchen in confusion for an answer that nobody’s there to give her. She finds her eyes drawn to the floor, where a bunch of brightly colored balls of candy are still rolling away hastily from behind the kitchen counter.

It’s then that Clarke registers the feeling of not being alone.

Her instincts set in immediately, gripping a knife in her hand before she even realizes she grabbed it off of the counter. She hasn’t needed a weapon. She’s supposed to be _alone_.

She moves silently, carefully stepping around the sugared candies as not to disturb them, and makes to turn around the corner and defend herself from whatever is hiding there.

Instead, she turns the corner and actually staggers back at the sight in front of her.

Clarke feels her mouth hanging open, tries to get it together, and finds herself crouching down and placing her knife far off to the side where she had come from. She refuses to look away, won’t even blink, fearing that the moment she looks away, she’ll be gone.

“ _Heya_ ,” she hears herself saying in a language she hasn’t spoken in over six months.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Heya_ : Hello
> 
> There's going to be quite a bit of Trigedasleng in the next chapter, who wants to take a wild guess whyyyy.....


	5. 96 - Here, let me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried to keep the Trigedasleng to a minimum. I don't speak it, you don't speak it, and I'm honestly not sure how accurate translators are for it. That being said, translations for everything are at the end..

For a moment, Clarke thinks she may be hallucinating. After all, she did see Bellamy that day when she thought she was going to die.

But no. This is different.

Bellamy had looked how he was in the early days, back at the dropship. For one thing, there hadn’t been a mark on his face, no signs of the struggles and fights he’d gone through on earth. For another, he wasn’t in the jumpsuit she had last seen him in, protecting him from the rising radiation levels.

She knew he wasn’t real, even in her delirium.

Now?

She’s definitely coherent, and the little girl crouched in the corner of the kitchen, fear laced in her eyes, certainly has seen the unforgiving forces of the earth. As Clarke stays balanced in her crouching position in front of the girl, she takes in what little there is to her.

She’s _small_.

The child is no doubt young, probably no older than six or seven, but the thinness of her body and the frailness of her arms and legs makes her look even younger, especially as she curls in to get as far away from Clarke as possible.

“ _Yu nou fir raun_ ,” Clarke tells her gently, careful not to move forward closer to her or to make any large motions with her hands. The child is _terrified_. Clarke can see it in the way her eyes keep darting from place to place around the kitchen as if looking for some way to escape, but always ending up back on Clarke, the stranger who came barging in on her.

Her clothes are tattered, probably have been on her body for weeks, if not months. But from what Clarke can see, they have the telltale signs of belonging to some grounder tribe.

She probably doesn’t know any English, and Clarke’s speaking of her language is no doubt rusty. She feels the awkwardness in the little she has said so far, trying to stay calm as not to scare her off and drawing up words she learned less than a year ago herself.

When she notes the girl watching her, eyeing her only slightly less hesitantly, Clarke speaks again in that same gentle tone. “ _Ai laik Klark_ ,” she says while raising a hand slowly to rest against her chest, feeling the pounding of her heart as she does. “ _Chit ste yu tagon_?”

Clarke pauses then, hoping she’ll answer. A name, just getting her name could maybe prod her into talking more, or really at all.

When she doesn’t answer, just continues staring, Clarke starts at the realization that there’s another living being in front of her. Someone else who is _alive_ on this burnt planet.

“ _Laik yu soulou_?” She asks urgently, unintentionally leaning forward to look around the kitchen for someone else to pop out from a doorway or from behind the other side of the counter. If this little girl survived, a Nightblood most likely, then who’s to say that others haven’t survived as well?

At Clarke’s sudden movements and change in tone, the girl’s head shakes back and forth quickly as she pushes her legs out in front of her, scooting her further into the corner.

Clarke feels the frustration with herself rising. She hadn’t noticed how the girl was starting to relax until she’s curling up again, making herself as small as possible.

And Clarke finds herself growing agitated too.

After six months of solitude, there’s another human right in front of her. A child, no less, who appears to be completely alone.

A child who has most likely survived _six months_ on her own as well, and who won’t survive much longer on her own if her fragile form is anything to go by.

Clarke needs the girl to trust her, to let Clarke _take care_ of her.

But she’s never been the one who is good with kids.

Still, she has to try.

She plops herself down onto the ground, out of her crouching position, crossing her legs in front of her and unintentionally sending forgotten balls of candy rolling in random directions.

She doesn’t miss how the girl’s eyes track the various paths of the candy hungrily, and Clarke’s heart clenches at the sight.

This child is starving and the first thing she grabs out of the mansion’s stores is balls of sugar, undoubtedly snatching the first thing she saw and tearing into it.

Her eyes continue to follow the candies, and it’s clear she can’t help herself when she picks up the two that go rolling towards her and holding on to them like treasures, tight against her chest. Her attention then goes to the ones that are within her reach.

The ones right by Clarke.

“Here, let me,” Clarke says impulsively in the wrong language, before reaching out to grab the sweets surrounding her. She regrets it a second later when the girl’s attention is brought back to Clarke at the foreign words.

It’s clear she had forgotten about the “danger” Clarke imposed with her need to eat.

But Clarke pushes on, refusing to let up. “ _Teik ai_ ,” she tries again, moving slowly and gauging her reaction to the movements.

She doesn’t huddle back into the corner again, which Clarke takes note of excitedly, as she watches Clarke collect the surrounding candies in her hand.

When Clarke has all of the ones she can reach in her palm, she makes to show that she’s moving towards the girl, whose attention keeps jumping from Clarke’s hand to her face.

But still, she sits firm in her spot, determination written across her young features as she places her own hands facing up in front of her, cupping them together.

She’s _brave_.

“ _Em ste klir_ ,” Clarke assures her as she pours the candies into the girl’s waiting hands, careful not to touch them. Once she has them all, she immediately slides them over to balance them in her one hand while the other starts popping them into her mouth quickly.

Clarke knows she’s going to have to get her some crackers or something else soon to avoid her getting sick on an empty stomach full of sugar. Who knows when she last ate.

But she can’t bring herself to look away from her just yet.

“ _Yu laik klir_ ,” Clarke adds softly. If she has anything to say about it, this girl is going to survive.

“Madi,” a young, but strong voice says in response. Clarke’s attention immediately jumps from eager hands covered in sugar to that determined face again. “ _Ai laik Madi_.”

“Madi,” Clarke repeats breathlessly once she’s sitting again, notably closer to her than she was before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Yu nou fir raun_ : Do not be afraid  
>  _Ai laik Klark_ : I am Clarke  
>  _Chit ste yu tagon_?: What is your name?  
>  _Laik yu soulou_?: Are you alone?  
>  _Teik ai_ : Let me  
>  _Em ste klir_ : It is safe  
>  _Yu laik klir_ : You are safe  
>  _Ai laik Madi_ : I am Madi


	6. 79 - You're safe now. I've got you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigedasleng translations at the bottom :)

Clarke watches Madi eat the candies for another moment before she forces herself to stand.

She doesn’t miss how Madi’s eyes immediately track her movements, but tries to give her what she hopes is a reassuring smile. “ _Yu gaf dina in_ ,” she tells her while gesturing towards the still open food cabinet, and silently praying that she’ll understand and not bolt the moment Clarke is turned away.

But Madi needs to eat, and if nothing else, Clarke thinks they can be on the same page about that.

So she turns away, makes quick work of grabbing one of the many boxes of crackers from the cabinet, turns back around and finds–

That Madi is still there, still watching Clarke intently.

Clarke also notices for the first time that missing jar of peaches laying on its side to the left of Madi. She smiles at that, trying to imagine this fierce, brave little girl trying to open the jar, failing, and resorting to the candy instead in her rush.

Making her way back over to Madi, Clarke slowly reaches for the jar, giving Madi the chance to shift away if she wants to.

She doesn’t. She watches as Clarke takes the jar, watches as she opens it and the crackers, watches as she dips one of the crackers in the jellied peaches, and watches as she raises it between them as some sort of offering.

This time, she doesn’t wait for Clarke to place it in her hands, and instead reaches out her hands to take it from Clarke’s grasp.

And proceeds to devour it in seconds, licking her fingers of any lingering jelly.

Clarke huffs out what can almost be called a laugh, placing the food in between them and looking back to Madi. “ _Choj op_ ,” Clarke says as she takes her own cracker and dips it before eating it, licking her own fingers of jelly. And eat Madi does, demolishing the crackers with Clarke.

And well, that’s at least two things they can probably bond about – Madi needs to eat, and they both like peaches.

* * *

For the first time in months, the weeks start to _fly_.

With Madi there to take care of, Clarke feels her sense of purpose start to return. She gets Madi to come back with her to the lab that first day, but once there, Clarke realizes that they’re going to have to move their permanent residence to the mansion, at least for now. Clarke was fine sleeping on the couch in the lab, but there’s no way she’s letting Madi sleep on the couch, let alone the ground. She deserves a bed.

So gradually, they move what little Clarke has claimed as her own to the mansion – her sketchbook, the radio, the satellite, and some clothes she packs into a bag.

She catches Madi staring at the floor drawings every time they’re in the lab.

And then they settle into yet another routine.

* * *

“I can’t wait for you to meet her,” Clarke tells Bellamy as she sits on a charred log in the barren woods. “She hasn’t spoken since she told me her name, but she’s so smart, Bell. She understands what I’m saying, even if I’m speaking her language a little broken sometimes. And she’s so _curious_. It’s like I can see the questions she wants to ask in her eyes. I think if I give it another week or so, maybe she’ll start opening up. It’s only been three weeks so–”

She cuts herself off when she catches herself rambling, staring at the radio for a second to collect herself.

“How many times have I caught myself going on about Madi since we found each other?” She asks him, releasing the button and giving a pause for him to respond. She’s found herself doing it more and more, giving him the chance to respond even though she doesn’t expect it.

She’s hoping one day she’ll be surprised.

“She’s wandering through the woods right now. I told her to stay close, but honestly, if she survived in the woods as long as she did, who am I to tell her what she can and can’t do? I know I say this a lot, but I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t –”

“ _KLARK_!”

Clarke jumps at the sound, dropping the radio in shock at the sound of her name. Her stomach drops right after at the realization that it was Madi, sounding absolutely _petrified_.

“ _Beja_! _Sisen_!” She hears Madi cry helplessly.

And that’s what kicks her into action. “Madi!” Clarke yells as she runs through the deserted woods, heart pounding with the sheer panic of hearing Madi’s screams. “Where are you?” She yells, only realizing it’s the wrong language after the fact. “Dammit! _Weron laik yu_?”

“ _KLARK_! _Beja_! Please, please, please!”

Hearing Madi’s voice, scared and speaking _English_ , is like a jolt to Clarke’s system. She’s shaking as she runs towards the voice, blood like ice as she hears Madi’s pleas.

Clarke hears the whimpers before she sees her, mainly because when she finds her, Madi’s fifteen feet up in the air, dangling in a grounder net above the ground.

She should have known the grounders who helped A.L.I.E. would leave traps on the island. And that a fucking apocalypse wouldn’t destroy them.

“Madi!” Clarke calls from beneath, searching urgently for anything to cut her down with. She’s taken to carrying a knife since finding Madi, but that won’t do her any good if she can’t find the damn rope that’s holding her up there.

At the sound of her voice, Madi immediately looks towards the ground. “Clarke,” she calls desperately, “please. Please _sis ai au_.”

“Okay,” she reassures breathlessly, “it’s okay, I’m going to get you down.” Her brain is too muddled to translate as she tears through nearby bushes in search of the rope, until she finally finds it, cutting it with one firm swipe and lowering the net’s precious cargo to the ground gently.

Once the net settles on the ground, Madi’s in her arms almost instantly. Clarke is holding her just as tightly, adrenaline still roaring through her veins.

“ _Mochof_ ,” she tells Clarke over and over and over again. “ _Mochof, mochof, mochof_.”

Clarke just continues to shush her, rocking her back and forth in place. “You’re safe now. I’ve got you,” she soothes, trying to comfort the both of them.

She tries to check Madi for injuries while refusing to let go of her. She seems fine, certainly scared, but for the most part unharmed. Her eyes catch on black trickling down Madi’s leg from a cut, probably from when the net had ripped her from the ground.

“I’ve got you, _strik natblida_.”

* * *

“I get it now.”

Clarke glances over at Madi, fast asleep, huddled onto the couch. The lab had been closer, so Clarke had carried Madi there to clean the cut on her leg and the other various scrapes she had gotten.

“I get why you did every single thing you did for Octavia.”

After Clarke had finished, Madi wouldn’t let her leave her side. Clarke had stroked her fingers through Madi’s hair until she dozed off on the couch.

When Clarke was sure Madi would be asleep for a while, she took the few minutes’ walk back to get the radio.

“I thought I lost Madi today,” she whispers, eyes watching Madi’s steady breaths. “I know I’ve been scared before, and god, I’ve lost so many people,” she continues, finally letting the tears fall, “but it’s never been like this.”

She takes a breath, steadying herself.

“She’s my responsibility, Bellamy. We’ve taken care of so many people, but this? Thinking of being _more_ to Madi, more than a friend? A sister, a caretaker, a– a mom?” Her breath catches on that last word.

“She’s been listening to me talk to you,” Clarke says instead. “She’s picking up English already, I told you she was smart.”

One more steadying breath, and she feels herself calming down.

“She keeps hearing me say ‘please,’ Bell. _Please_ answer. _Please_ take care of yourself. _Please_ look after the others.”

She feels the smallest of smiles on her lips.

“ _Please_ come home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Yu gaf dina in_ : You need food  
>  _Choj op_ : Eat  
>  _Beja_ : Please  
>  _Sisen_ : Help  
>  _Weron laik yu_ : Where are you?  
>  _Sis ai au_ : Help me  
>  _Mochof_ : Thank you  
>  _Strik natblida_ : Little nightblood
> 
> POV is going to be switching up for the next couple of these. I think it's time we see what's going on up in space...


	7. 82 - Looks like we'll be stuck here for a while.

When Bellamy wakes, he’s surprised that the lights are already on.

Raven had eventually gotten the system up and running to make sure that they all were able to keep some sort of normal sleeping pattern.

For Emori and Echo, it had been a huge adjustment. Going from having the sun indicate day and night for their entire lives to living in endless darkness with the sun as a constant neighbor, it had been a lot. For the rest of them, it was an unwanted reminder of how they had lived the majority of their lives, ruled by the Ark.

For Bellamy, it was pretty much a waste of time. He didn’t sleep, no matter whether the lights were on or off.

At first it was because there was so much to be done – get the algae farm up and running, make sure their oxygen source wouldn’t short out, start up the heating units, search for parts to help Raven and Monty fix pretty much everything – and then it was because of the dreams.

Blonde hair, blue eyes. Brown hair, eyes marked with war paint. Blonde hair again, this time burning.

Eventually, the dreams started to lose their sharpness, their vividness, but they never left him completely, no matter how many years passed.

Then it was because he worried.

He worried about Raven and Monty overworking themselves constantly for _years_ , trying to maintain the Ark as their temporary home and figuring out a way to eventually get back to Earth. He worried about Harper feeling useless when she couldn’t figure out why one of them was feeling sick. He worried about Murphy, who refused to step foot anywhere near where he used to live with his mom. He worried about Echo constantly wandering through the dark halls, rarely speaking. And he worried about Emori liking space a little too much, and how she would react when they eventually tried to get back home.

Between all of his worries, the dreams, and his need to keep his promise to protect and lead them all, he didn’t sleep. An hour here, two hours there, maybe a few more if he’d been awake for a day or two, but never through the “night” and never past when the lights came on to signal another “day.”

Or in this case, the 1,825th day.

But today, he did. Which meant he was going to be behind on his rounds.

* * *

He finds Echo further down on her usual path than he normally does.

“You’re late today,” she observes as he catches up with her, never slowing her wandering pace. He’d think her tone was reprimanding if he wasn’t used to it by now.

“I actually slept through the lights turning on,” he tells her, matching her stride and continuing to look forward.

He can see Echo’s head turn out of the corner of his eye. “You’d think it wouldn’t have taken you five years to do that,” she replies evenly, though Bellamy can hear the implication in it. _Why now?_

“Maybe it’s a sign that things are going to change,” he says, slowing down so he can turn down the next hallway toward what they had designated as their “medical wing.”

He hears Echo snort as she continues past him. “Sure,” is her only response.

* * *

When Bellamy enters the medical room, he’s surprised to find that Harper isn’t alone.

He’s equally surprised to find that it’s Monty that’s with her, and that Harper is crying.

He pauses in the doorway, unsure whether to intrude, but Monty’s eyes are already meeting his, and Harper is turning toward what has Monty’s attention.

“Everything okay?” Bellamy asks, taking another step into the room.

Harper gives him a watery smile, “yeah, it’s just–,” she halts as she scrubs both of her hands across her face to wipe away her tears. “Just a disappointing day,” she finishes with a heavy sigh.

At that, Bellamy feels his throat tighten.

He nods in response, knowing anything he says will come out strained and reveal exactly how much he can relate. Instead, he nods and looks to Monty, who tilts his head in acknowledgment, telling Bellamy that he can take care of Harper.

“I’ll just keeping going then,” he tells them, pointing towards the door just as Harper comes over to wrap her arms around him.

“It’s okay to be disappointed, Bellamy,” she whispers before letting go of him and taking a step back, fresh tears already trailing down her face.

He nods once more, then heads out the door.

 _No it’s not_.

* * *

It doesn’t take him long to find Murphy and Emori, simply because they always end up back in the same area. If Emori isn’t watching Murphy tend to the algae, they’re both rummaging through the many rooms in Alpha Station, scrounging up possible parts for Raven and picking through the valuables that had been left behind.

He sees Murphy first, sitting in a hallway with a book in his lap. When Murphy hears Bellamy’s footsteps, his head lifts from the pages.

“Find anything good?” Bellamy asks, settling in next to him.

“Another cook book full of foods that I can’t make up here,” Murphy replies with only the slightest bit of bitterness. At this point, he seems to have gotten over it.

“And Emori?”

Murphy tilts his head toward the nearest doorway, where Bellamy can faintly hear movement coming from within. “She thinks she found some screws that Raven’s been wanting, so she’s trying to get as many as she can.” He looks at Bellamy again, and Bellamy knows that Murphy is searching his face. “We’re fine, go talk to Raven.”

Bellamy heaves a sigh, but doesn’t argue. He gets up from his spot and starts walking, feeling like he’s dragging his feet to their final destination.

* * *

He hears, more than sees, Raven near the ship. Or, well, their very rough, makeshift ship.

Instead of walking over to her, he heads towards one of the computer screens where a giant zero glares back at him in red.

He had held on to hope that they’d make it by today up until the screen hit twenty days and Raven didn’t say anything for a full three days.

Then, he knew.

“Five years,” Raven says from behind him, no longer by the ship.

1,825 days up in space. They’re supposed to be going back, and they’re not.

In the past twenty days, Bellamy’s thought about how he’d react to today.

Scream like he did that first day? Cry like he really hasn’t allowed himself to?

He turns to look at Raven, who’s already watching him. “I just need you to say it one more time, and then I’ll leave you alone about it,” he hears himself say. One more time, and then he’ll move on to whatever comes next.

Raven eyes him carefully, and then turns her attention to the zero on the screen that's mocking them.

“Okay,” she agrees, gaze remaining on the screen. “Looks like we’ll be stuck here for a while.”

Bellamy allows himself to take in a sharp breath, lets the crushing disappointment rush through him for a moment, and then he pulls himself together again. He doesn’t have time to wallow.

“Alright,” he says with a nod, “tell me what I can do to help.”

He watches as Raven eyes him up again, head tilted to the side, gears churning in her head. And for the first time, instead of telling him to take care of everyone else, she hands him a wrench.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In all honesty, it's a miracle this is the first time I'm posting late. Anyways, we're going to be sticking with Bellamy for a bit..


	8. 46 - I just need to be alone right now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I kind of like the idea of paralleling some of Bellamy's ficlets to Clarke's ficlets, at least for these first two. So we got both of them on the five year "anniversary," and now we're jumping back to the beginning again...

“With me?”

Raven looks at Bellamy, and he can feel her searching his face for something he’s not willing to show. “ _Always_ ,” she tells him with a confidence that makes it sound like everything will be okay.

But they’re back in fucking in space, in a ship that’s basically dead, without Clarke.

Nothing is okay.

They both turn back to the window where a burning Earth lights up the space around it. It’s almost like having a second sun, and the thought of Octavia being _underneath_ it, Clarke being completely _gone_. It makes him sick.

Raven can fix the ship up, and she can get them back to Earth in five years, but Clarke will never be there. And Bellamy will never be okay with that.

They don’t speak for a while, just keep staring, almost mesmerized by the destruction in front of them. Then Raven heaves a long-suffering sigh, carrying the stress of the past few hours and the never-ending troubles that lie ahead of them with it.

“I have to go see how Monty’s doing with the electric system,” she says, just as the lights flicker off briefly before turning back on. She curses under her breath, eyes glancing to the ceiling before landing back on him. Bellamy can feel her stare on him again, and tries to ignore the feeling of her trying to read him. “You should come with me, check and see how everyone else is doing,” she suggests as she turns completely away from the window as if she can’t look at it a second longer, even from the corner of her eye.

But Bellamy can’t look away.

And Raven doesn’t leave. “ _Bellamy_ ,” she says more emphatically when he doesn’t respond. He turns to her, still not saying anything. “Come on, I’m with you, but we all need to be together in this.”

 _Together_.

It feel likes that time Roan had stabbed him in the leg, hearing that word. Except this time, it’s right in his chest, completely knocking the breath out of him.

“I just–,” he starts, trying to fill his lungs with a short breath. “You go ahead,” he begins again, somehow sounding like a leader when he feels like anything but. “I just need to be alone right now.”

Raven hesitates for a moment before putting her own armor in place, face fierce with determination. “You do what you need to do,” she tells him when she sees she’s got his attention. She reaches out to squeeze his arm, as comforting as she’ll allow herself to be at this point. “You do that and then you come and lead us. She would expect nothing less from you.”

And that’s just it.

He has no idea _what_ she would expect of him on his own. She was supposed to be here too, they were supposed to do this _together_.

Raven lets go of his arm and heads back from where she came when he says nothing, footsteps fading at an unsteady beat the further away she moves.

Bellamy waits until the sound of steps are gone, until he’s alone for the first time in what feels like forever. He’s been with somebody, friend or foe, every moment since they landed on Earth. He hasn’t been completely alone since leaving the ark.

He lifts the bottle that was balanced on the sill of the window where he had left it. He grips the neck of it, reading the label mindlessly as his brain settles in a different time, a different place.

_I think we deserve a drink._

_Have one for me._

The bottle is shattering against the wall a second later, his arm settling back at his side calmly.

The sounds that erupt from him after that are anything but calm.

He screams and screams and screams. Screams, and punches, and yells until he’s just as exhausted as when he thought Octavia was dead.

She’s gone.

She’s _gone_. He left her to burn to nothing on a blazing planet.

Nobody comes to check on him, which is absolutely Raven’s doing. There’s no way that all of them haven’t heard him. But Raven told him to do what he had to do, what he needed in order to be the person that her and Monty and everyone else needs right now.

He settles down on the ground next to the shattered glass and the liquor that’s spreading out in tiny streams across the floor, tilting his head back against the wall and turning to face the window again. He feels drained, not even human, in a way he hasn’t since losing his mom and Octavia what feels like eons ago.

“I promise you,” he says to the Earth, he says to _her_ , “I am not going to let your death be in vain.”

So he gets up, boots crunching on the broken glass.

He gets up, follows the path that Raven took when she left him, and finds the six of them gathered where Monty had been stripping wires.

They watch him walk in, no one saying a word about hearing his screams or about anything at all. They watch him, and they wait for him to give them direction.

He turns to Raven who gives him a nod, before turning her attention to where Monty had undoubtedly been working since they got the oxygen up and running.

Looking at the others – Monty, Harper, Murphy, Emori, Echo – he knows what he has to do, what he has to say.

He locks down the part of himself that wants to grab the nearest breakable object and throw it with as much force as he can. He locks down the part that wants to cry and scream some more. He locks down his heart, for now.

And he starts using his head.

“The next five years are going to be rough,” he starts, glancing at each of them. Raven stops her work to watch him, listen to him. “We all need to stick together, _all of us_ , or else we’re going to die and that is not an option. I’m not– I’m not going to let her sacrifice go to waste.”

Monty nods his head, never breaking eye contact. “For Clarke,” he says solemnly.

The others chime in, and Bellamy wants to too. He really, truly does.

But he can’t bring himself to say her name out loud.


	9. 50 - I need you to forgive me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is based on the [Comic Con panel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFARUnF7sRE&feature=youtu.be) from this past weekend where Lindsey is talking about Raven and how everyone is in space because of her. So yeah, it got me thinking..

They’ve been up in space for ten days when Raven collapses.

It happens when she’s in the control room with Monty – falls to the floor as soon as she went to get up from where she’d been reconnecting wires – he explains after he yells for help and everyone comes barreling into the room from different directions.

“Is it another seizure?” Emori asks in a panic.

Murphy rushes over to Raven, turning her on her side even though she’s not shaking and there’s no blood coming from her nose.

Harper, having the most medical experience of all of them (which isn’t much), kneels down on Raven’s other side, placing her hand on her forehead, checking her pupils, listening to heart. “She’s not burning up, and her heart rate seems pretty normal,” she notes, voice holding steady even though there’s concern etched in her face.

Bellamy stares down at the clutter of them, hovering over Raven, guessing what’s wrong and trying to remain calm. He watches as Raven starts to stir, chest rising with the deep breath she takes and her eyes fluttering open in confusion.

Everyone steps back to give her space, except Murphy, who helps her up into a sitting position.

“Did I miss the party or something?” Raven jokes groggily, glancing at each of them until her eyes fall on Bellamy and stay.

“You fainted,” he explains. “And I’d bet it’s because you haven’t slept for more than an hour a day since we got here.”

Raven scoffs. “Right, because you should be lecturing me about sleeping habits.” She moves to stand, albeit a little shaky, either because of her leg or because she’s still dizzy.

Harper moves to help her, but Raven shrugs her off, missing the hurt laced in Harper’s eyes.

“I’m fine.” Raven moves to go check one of the screens, ignoring everyone’s presence. “Everyone go back to what you were doing,” she orders, eyes purposely glued to the screen and avoiding eye contact.

They look to Bellamy.

He nods his head, and only then do they start to move back out the entryways they had come rushing through. Looking to Monty, Bellamy tilts his head, gesturing for him to leave as well. He does, if only hesitating slightly before following Harper out the doorway.

When they’re alone, Bellamy makes his way over to Raven, standing next to her as she continues to scroll through numbers on the screen and ignore him.

“Raven, you need to rest,” he tells her, facing her even when she refuses to glance at him. “If you keep this up, it’ll be more than just fainting. You need to sleep, give your brain and your body a break.”

“Like you do?” She accuses, turning to glare at him.

Bellamy sighs. “I’m not the one fixing the unfixable and keeping everything running so that we stay alive.”

Raven turns to face him head on, giving him the full force of her glare. “I’m _fine_. Go worry about everyone else, hover over them so that I can get back to work.”

“You need a break and you know it,” he continues, taking in the purple underneath her eyes. “You have been going nonstop since we got here.”

“So have you!” She argues.

“Yeah, except I had a moment to decompress,” he disputes, “you gave that to me.”

Raven shakes her head, frustration coming off her in waves. “ _God_ Bellamy. Don’t you get it?”

“Get wh–”

“I don’t _deserve_ a break!” She shouts, hand slamming down on the keyboard. “I don’t _deserve_ time to decompress. _You_ shouldn’t have _had_ to decompress. None of you should even fucking be here!”

It’s silent in the wake of Raven exploding. Bellamy stares at her, unable to comprehend how she could think she of all people hasn’t earned a moment to breathe. “Raven–”

“Tell me something, Bellamy,” she cuts him off. “If I hadn’t sent that radio call to the bunker saying I was alive, where would you be right now? Not up in space with only six other people, right?”

Understanding dawns on him instantly.

She pushes on. “Where would Clarke be, huh?” Her name cuts through him, wounds still fresh. “She wouldn’t be dead, right?”

Silence follows her words, Bellamy not knowing what to say.

“The answer,” Raven reveals, sounding completely broken, “is that you both would be in the bunker. Safe. And Clarke would alive.”

Bellamy watches as tears start to run down her face, but she does nothing to brush them away. He feels his own eyes burning.

“You are all here because of me. You are all either dead or stuck in a tin can in space because _I_ wanted to live, and I need you to forgive me for that,” she whispers, refusing to look at Bellamy as she says it.

He feels gutted, listening to her condemn herself. He settles is hand on her wrist, pulling her attention back to him reluctantly. “I am never going to give you forgiveness for wanting to live. You can be as angry as you want for all the shit that has to get done up here, but I won’t let you guilt yourself into believing we’d all be better off if you hadn’t called for us.”

Raven pulls away from him, taking a step away.

“You want to know what would have happened to everyone?” Bellamy starts, refusing to let up until she fully understands. “Monty and Harper would have gotten to the bunker, only to find out they missed the chance to put their name into the lottery that would save their lives. The other grounders wouldn’t have let Emori stay, and Murphy would have left with her. Echo was banished, Octavia refused to even consider the idea of letting her in. They’d all be dead.”

He hesitates for a moment. “And we volunteered to come get you because you deserved the chance to live just as much as any of us. Because you’re our _friend_ and we care about you.”

Raven stares at him, eyes wide and searching for the something she didn’t need. “You don’t need my forgiveness, _anyone’s_ forgiveness. We would all do it again if we had to, for you. And you know she would have to.”

He feels his heart splinter, try to break away from where he had locked it, but he knows it’s the truth.

Instead, he watches as Raven accepts that truth in his eyes too, nodding as she wipes away her tears and exhales a breath.

“Get some rest Reyes, or else I’ll put Murphy in charge of repairs.” It’s an empty threat, more so to break the tension than anything.

It works though.

Raven lets out a wet laugh, looking back to him with her unwavering strength. “Only a few hours,” she swears, exhaustion evident.

“That’s all I ask,” Bellamy tells her gently.

And to the relief of all six of them, she does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're officially a quarter of the way through folks! I'd love to hear thoughts about what you think so far :)


	10. 93 - It's a real shame nobody asked for your opinion.

“Okay, so we’ve got the computers about as functional as they’re going to get with what Monty and I have to work with. Heating system will keep us from freezing death, at least for the near future. Algae farm is in its first stage of growth, there’s not much we can do to hurry that along. And water filtration is ready whenever we are,” Raven lists off to the three of them.

Bellamy doesn’t miss Murphy’s cringe at the mention of the water filtration system.

“We’ve got everything working well enough to keep us alive for now,” Monty adds on. “So, that’s something.”

Bellamy nods, trying to mentally check off everything that’s vital to their survival up here. “That’s more than something. Two weeks, and we’re not dead yet. Great job.”

Raven rolls her eyes. “Two weeks, and we have the literal basics so that we don’t freeze, starve, or dehydrate.”

“We’ve got time for the rest,” he tells her, really tells all three of them. “Maybe you and Monty should take a break. Go rest, or help stock the med room. Anything to get you to relax for a few hours.” He takes a second to look over Monty and Raven. Since Raven’s collapse a few days ago, he’s been hovering, checking in, making sure they’re not overdoing it.

It’s been driving them crazy.

But he can’t help but begin to notice the bruises starting to form underneath everyone’s eyes, the way Monty’s hands shake because he’s straining them instead of letting them heal. They’re getting by on the bare minimum, and he’s hoping it’ll last until something gives – the algae grow enough, or they find some miracle stash of food somewhere.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Raven states. “We’ve still got a long way to go before I’m going to be even remotely confident in letting things run on their own so we can work on a way of getting home. Steady the electric system so we don’t short out, hack into the Ark’s supplies database to see if there’s anything we can use, find extra parts for the oxygen scrubber before we find out it’s not working the hard way.”

At that, Bellamy pauses. “And fix the radio, right?”

He knows it’s not on the top of the priority list, there’s so much that needs to be done so that they make it up here and get back down to Earth.  But it _is_ important. If they can get in touch with the bunker, they should.

Except then he’s watching as Raven and Monty eye each other, as if silently debating who’s going to break some sort of news to him. He hadn’t realized the pit in his stomach had gradually lifted over the past week or so until it plummets again.

Monty apparently loses the mental battle.

“We’ve decided that the radio isn’t something worth fixing,” Monty explains hesitantly, like breaking it to him gently is going to soften the blow. Bellamy can feel Raven and Monty, even Murphy, watching him, gauging his reaction before he can even process what Monty has said.

Whatever it is he is processing, he’s not liking it. “And when did we make that decision?” If he can hear the challenge in his voice, then they definitely can too.

Raven takes a deep breath, almost a heavy sigh, and Bellamy already feels the beginnings of a fight. “We made that decision when we decided we want to go back to Earth in five years. Or have you changed your mind on that?” She counters.

To his credit, he doesn’t take the bait. But he also doesn’t back down.

It took less than a day of them being on the ground before the first fight broke out. It’s kind of remarkable that it’s taken them two weeks in space before they truly start arguing over something minor.

“I understand it’s not the most important thing we need to worry about at the moment, but I don’t see why we can’t try and fix it eventually,” he says in the most even voice he can manage. He feels his anger starting to bubble, knows it’s mostly unwarranted.

Before Raven can speak, Monty cuts in, clearly trying to diffuse the situation. “We’re going to need to use parts from the communication system to build whatever we try to get home in. Even if we got the radio working, we’d have to dismantle it eventually.”

“And that makes it not worth fixing? Even if we got in contact with the bunker for a day to see that they’re alive?” He argues, voice rising.

“What then?” Raven protests. “You hear Octavia for five minutes like you did in the lab, only for it to be ripped away from you again? Is it worth the pain you’d feel after?”

“Or the pain you’d feel if they got it working and nobody answers ‘cause they’re dead,” Murphy adds. “I’m with them, no radio.”

For a moment, Bellamy sees red. “It’s a real shame nobody asked for your opinion then, Murphy,” he growls, just barely holding himself back from shoving Murphy into the nearest wall.

Octavia and the rest of them being dead in the ground is not an option.

Murphy still takes a step back, hands raised in front of him. “Hey, if you didn’t want my opinion, you could have just told me to go to the med room. Like you said, we need to stay focused, and that radio decides whether we go back or we stay here. I vote going back.”

“There is no vote,” Raven says, voice pure irritation. “Monty and I need the parts for the ship, and we’re not going to do anything that will jeopardize anyone’s will to go back to Earth.” She directs her attention straight at Bellamy. He stares back, blood still simmering, still looking to fight.

“I’m right. You _know_ I’m right. So go take a break. Go chill out, anything to get you to settle down.” Bellamy doesn’t miss his own words being used against him.

He levels them all with a final glare they don’t really deserve, but does as she asks, leaving the room fuming.

* * *

He comes back later, after he’s calmed down and accepted the fact that he overreacted.

Raven’s the only one there. She definitely notices him, and she definitely ignores him in favor of continuing her work underneath the monitors.

Still, he clears his throat before speaking. “Knowing you’re right is a hell of a lot easier than accepting you’re right,” he tells her gruffly.

He gets why the radio shouldn’t be fixed. If he didn’t hear his sister’s voice, he’s not sure he’d even care about going back. The heart he’s trying to ignore can’t take losing anyone else.

But he’s still not happy about it.

She slides out from where she is and reaches her arm up. Bellamy grabs her hand and pulls her up. “I don’t want an apology,” she tells him when she’s facing him. “I want you to trust that I’m going to do everything I can to keep us alive and get us back to the ground. If I thought the radio would help, I’d work on it. I need you to trust me on that.”

Bellamy nods, tries out a smirk that probably falls flat. “If there’s one thing I don’t doubt, it’s your brain.”

Raven shoves his shoulder, amusement dancing in her eyes. It only lasts a second, her face sobering immediately. She turns to press a few keys on one of the computers, where the screen lights up with bright red numbers.

1,811.

“Don’t focus on the radio,” she gestures to the screen. “Focus on that.”

1,811 days until they can go back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought it was about time Sassy!Bellamy made an appearance ;)


	11. 86 - I got you a present.

A year into being in space, Bellamy doesn’t think the others could say or do anything that could possibly surprise him.

They’ve come to know each other on a deeply personal level at this point, most of the time in good ways, sometimes not. But it would take a lot for Bellamy to be really, truly surprised.

And then Murphy says, “I got you a present.”

His voice itself is enough to startle Bellamy since he was so engrossed in reading through a section of Raven’s notes on her initial rundown of supplies they will need for the ship.

He’s been trying to decipher this symbol and that word for hours, and hadn’t realized the dull throb in his head, or just how hard he was concentrating on the paper until he looks up and has to squint at Murphy and Emori so his eyes can focus on their forms in his room.

Once he’s able to see them clearly, he’s able to process what Murphy said, or – at least know what words he said. The context still isn’t making much sense to him.

“You got me a–”

“Present,” Murphy finishes, aiming for a casual tone.

Which, doesn’t really clear much up.

“Okay?” Bellamy says, hearing his confusion leak into his voice.

Emori takes pity on both of them, bumping Murphy’s side supportively before explaining. “You’ve been squinting a lot lately when you read. We’ve all noticed, and Harper thinks that’s where the headaches are coming from. She says you’re straining your eyes.”

Bellamy opens his mouth, ready to deny it. But Murphy cuts him off. “Think about it. Everything’s blurry on paper until you concentrate really hard, and then you have to let them adjust back before you can see your surroundings again. I bet you have a headache right now.”

He glares in place of responding, not willing to lie, but also not willing to openly confirm Murphy’s assumption.

When neither of them say anything else, Emori jumps back in. “On the ground, we didn’t really have these,” she says, placing a bag on the desk he was reading at. It’s lumpy, with whatever’s inside poking the fabric in different spots. “But John said one of them should hopefully help you, so he’s been picking them up when we’re looking for pieces for Raven.”

Not knowing what to say, still not fully understanding, Bellamy reaches for the bag, opening it up to find…

Glasses.

More eye glasses of different shapes, colors, and sizes than Bellamy could have even imagined resided in this section of the Ark.

He looks up at the couple, eyebrows raised.

Murphy clears his throat, sounding almost – embarrassed. “One of them should make looking at small things a little clearer. I’m rooting for the leopard print ones.”

At that, Bellamy lets out a foreign laugh. The vibrations, the sound, startle him. He hasn’t felt this kind of warm, this kind of happy, in a long time, but he’s grateful nonetheless. Maybe he does need glasses, and everyone else took the time to notice, to care, when he didn’t have a clue.

“Thank you,” he says, trying to express how much this means to him in two little words. Glancing at the two of them again, Bellamy thinks that’s it. They came to bring him a ton of glasses to try out, and now they’ll move on to whatever they’re going to do next.

But he watches as Emori bumps Murphy again, this one a little stronger, almost like she’s telling him to keep going.

“Uh,” Murphy starts, pausing to glance at Emori, who smiles encouragingly. “There’s something else too.”

Their uncertainty, the way Murphy seems to be treading carefully with what he’s trying to say, makes Bellamy alert all over again.

“Another present?” He asks, trying to diffuse the rising tension in the room he doesn’t understand.

Murphy smirks, giving a shake of his head. “Just try on the glasses, find the pair that work best, and then come find me.”

Bellamy can’t shake the uneasiness that comes with how vague Murphy is being. But he looks at Emori, and she still has that look of encouragement on her face, so it can’t be anything that bad.

“You find a way to get us back on Earth?” he quips, trying to break his apprehension.

“A closer guess than you would think,” Murphy mutters as he heads into the hall.

* * *

“We hadn’t gone through this section yet because I didn’t think there would be much to salvage,” Murphy explains as Bellamy and him make their way down the dimly lit hallway. “I mean, when I was locked up, there wasn’t much to begin with, and I figured whatever there was would have been cleared out once they sent us to the ground.”

Bellamy continues to listen, trying to take in the Sky Box as they walk through it, trying to take in the place where so many of the people he cares about were forced to live.

“Plus,” Murphy adds, “I hate this place almost as much as my folk’s quarters.”

Bellamy nods, not knowing what to say. He reaches up to adjust the black frames he had chosen from the bag, just to do something with his hands.

When they reach a particular door, they stop, and Bellamy can feel Murphy watching him. “I was never in solitary, but I heard the rumors. When I found this, I was just going to leave it. But, Emori thinks you deserve to see it.”

Any uneasiness that had dissipated from when Murphy gave him the glasses comes back ten-fold. He wants to say he doesn’t know what Murphy’s talking about, but his heart tells him otherwise.

“I’ll wait out here,” Murphy tells him, settling in on the ground, but watching Bellamy the entire time, like he’s afraid of how he’ll respond.

Bellamy takes a shaky breath, hand almost shaking when he grabs for the handle to slide the door open.

He steps in, and the air rushes out of his lungs instantly. He vaguely registers the door clicking shut behind him, but he’s too consumed with taking it all in.

Because all around him, there’s Clarke.


	12. 48 - I made a mistake.

He hadn’t understood, didn’t get why Murphy had mumbled those words.

_A closer guess than you would think_.

But then he’s standing in front of a sole drawing on the ground of the cell – a clear night sky, the moon and stars shining bright – and he gets it.

It’s not the scene on the ground that brings him to his knees, the accuracy shocking when she hadn’t ever seen such a night yet when drawing this. It’s not even the walls, where not a single inch of space is left untouched from charcoal.

It’s that if he looks hard enough, he can see her.

Clarke, running out of room on the walls and resorting to start her work on covering as much of the space on the ground as well.

Clarke, who had started that drawing, and was pulled away before she could finish it, if the partial sketches branching out from the main piece are anything to go by.

Clarke, who never came back to draw more.

Everything about what she went through is here in this room, and Bellamy feels whatever cage or locks he tried to place on his heart shatter instantly.

Before everything happened with his mom and Octavia, before his whole world shattered for the first time, Bellamy thought that he would eventually have to take on duties in the Sky Box. None of the guards particularly liked the shifts, which meant they were left to the newest members, and he was sure his time would eventually come where he would have to guard not only the people sentenced to the Sky Box, but those who were so terrible, so unpredictable, that they had to be locked up, completely alone – in solitary.

But then his mom died and Octavia was taken.

When news broke about Jake Griffin and his daughter, the former being floated and the latter being condemned to solitary until her eighteenth birthday, he was too numb to care.

He thinks he might cry, now, start sobbing with the absolute pain that is breaking through his chest and trying to tear him apart with each gulp of air he tries to take in.

Terrible, unpredictable Clarke Griffin, his ass.

They locked her up. They kept her away from anyone who could possibly lend a hand or send a warning to someone who would listen about what was happening to the Ark.

He doesn’t cry.

No, instead, he reaches a tentative hand out in front of himself. He tries to steady the tremble, from sadness or anger (maybe something else, he isn’t sure) and brushes the softest of touches against that starry night.

He jolts his hand away when he sees the smudge he made.

He rubs the smear of black between his fingers, and can almost imagine that the drawing is fresh and that Clarke will come from behind any second and yell at him for messing up her work.

Wishful thinking, he supposes.

Getting back on his feet, Bellamy makes his way over to one of the four small, decorated walls.

She was _here_. Probably drew anything to keep herself from going out of her mind with loneliness.

There’s trees branching from various corners, and Bellamy finds himself surprised all over again with how accurate and detailed they are for having never seen the real thing yet.

He briefly wonders if she based them off pictures she saw in Earth Studies, or if it was her own hopes and dreams of what the Earth held for her to find one day.

Trees, and vines, and flowers, and beetles.

Ships and pyramids, ancient buildings he always wanted to learn more about, even one very detailed picture of a scorpion – all for her to dream about one day seeing.

He feels his heart thump harder and harder in his chest, released from its confines, now trying to simply burst as he resists tracing any of the sketches in fear of disturbing them.

And with an awareness so sudden, Bellamy realizes what she would want him to do if she didn’t make it. She _told_ him for stars sake.

“I made a mistake,” he whispers to her hoarsely. “You didn’t want me to lock it away.”

Head _and_ heart. He doesn’t need to shut one down and focus on the other.

He needs to use both.

“You never believed me,” he accuses gently. Eyes burning, he laughs with a sort of dark amusement. “That nothing was going to happen to you,” he clarifies to no one.

Bellamy moves to sit on her abandoned cot, apparently the only thing she had in this prison besides her charcoal. He rests his elbows on his knees, head settling in his waiting hands, and takes what he hopes is a deep, cleansing breath.

“I’m going to use my head to keep them alive,” he tells her, staring at the ground, “and I’m going to use my heart to keep you alive.” Still, whatever’s left of it starts to crack into its final, minuscule pieces.

He loved her, and he never told her. And he’ll live with that until the day he dies.

The cot creaks underneath him as he moves to stand. He slowly turns around to take it all in once more, closing his eyes to feel her essence emanating from every corner. He doesn’t have faith in a greater being, or even the afterlife, but if she’s somewhere in these walls, watching over them, he hopes the second the Earth starts to heal, she finds it, and she thrives in it.

“I love you,” he says, his voice the strongest it’s been, testing words that he thought a thousand times, but never voiced.

And then he reaches for the door and slides it open, stepping out without another glance back. Murphy jumps to his feet, eyes immediately surveying Bellamy for damage he can’t see. “Good?” He asks cautiously.

Bellamy nods his head, looks Murphy straight in the eyes so he knows he means it. “I’m good,” he tells him.

Murphy’s shoulders drop a sliver in relief.

“Find the key and lock it up,” Bellamy adds, and watches Murphy’s shoulders tense up two times higher than they were.

“What?” Murphy asks, shock coloring his tone.

“I want the door sealed,” Bellamy repeats.

He’d never heal. He’d never be able to function how they all needed him to.

“Thank you for showing me,” he tells Murphy sincerely, “but I can’t go back in there.”

And he would. He’d go back again and again and again. Glutton for punishment.

When Murphy doesn’t speak, but gives Bellamy his nod in understanding, Bellamy turns and walks out of the Sky Box.

If he went back, let those fractured pieces of his heart continue to splinter and break, there’d be nothing left to keep her alive, to remember her.

He can’t let that happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun Fact #1: I went back to the pilot episode to check out what drawings Clarke did on the walls, and there was indeed a very detailed sketch of a scorpion.
> 
> Fun Fact #2: This chapter marks a third of the way through the hiatus :)
> 
> Fun Fact #3: We're heading back to see what Clarke and Madi are up to...


	13. 88 - See, now, was that so bad?

Clarke’s sharpening their kitchen knives when Madi strolls in from her daily walk.

Two years after finding Madi, and not a single sign of anything living has popped up. No plants, no animals, and no people.

But Clarke can’t bring herself to let those knives grow dull from them cutting through crisped foliage and charred trees around the island, searching for signs of hidden bunkers or storage areas. They haven’t found any other weapons throughout the mansion, no hordes of guns or anything, so she’s making do with what they’ve got.

“Find anything interesting?” Clarke calls at the sounds of Madi’s shuffling. She turns just as she walks into the room, and Clarke will never get over the change over the past two years. How even under the circumstances, Madi at least looks _healthy_.

Madi shrugs, placing a pair of smoothed rocks on the table in front of Clarke. “The water is getting strong in the stream. I followed it to the sea and found these,” she says, gesturing to her rocks.

The rocks, are a normal thing.

After the incident with the Grounder trap, Madi stayed close to Clarke when they wandered through the woods, eyes always trained to the ground for snares and nets.

They had spent weeks searching the woods for other hidden traps, rigging them so that they were useless, leaving a few for their own use in case there were other Night Bloods that showed up that weren’t friendly.

And in the process, Madi started collecting rocks from the ground that fascinated her.

Some were sharp, others were colorful, all were small and caught her attention. With so little to entertain themselves, Clarke encouraged that curiosity that drove Madi, letting her relearn the freedom of walking through the woods on her own after that first incident and adding to her collection before coming back for her lessons with Clarke.

Lessons that Madi excelled in, practically having English completely mastered.

Clarke reaches out to grab the rocks, running her hands over the smooth edges. “That’s good. If the water is coming back, hopefully that means the plants aren’t far behind. The sea,” Clarke adds, treading carefully, “that’s farther than you normally go.”

She ignores the uneasiness she feels at realizing Madi wasn’t in the vicinity like she thought she was, that if Madi needed her, Clarke probably wouldn’t have heard her.

To Madi’s credit, she just rolls her eyes at Clarke’s hovering. “I was fine,” she assures Clarke.

But her tone has Clarke’s attention, though she continues with her knives, not wanting to make a big deal of it. She’s learned all of Madi’s voices, in Trigedasleng _and_ English. And this voice tells her there’s more.

“I found something else,” Madi eventually says, having moved to sit next to Clarke.

“Yeah?”

Madi nods her head. “There’s a sleeping beast near the sea.”

Clarke’s hands pause in their motions. If Madi hadn’t had her full attention, she has it now. “A what?”

“A beast,” she repeats. “It’s sleeping under a lot of the burned trees. It didn’t move when I walked up to it.”

Clarke stares at her, unsure what to say next, and Madi knows it, if the challenge in her eyes is anything to go by. She’d think it was Madi’s imagination, finally having a moment for little childlike, whimsical fantasies.

But this is Earth. Kids don’t have time to be childlike and whimsical.

“Are you sure it was sleeping and not dead?” She asks instead.

For the first time, Madi appears the slightest bit unsure, looking down at her hands. “I don’t know. Its eyes were open, but it wasn’t moving. I thought sleeping made more sense if it had survived.”

A beast. Was it even possible for something to live out in the woods? Something that’s stuck to the coastline, away from them?

“Do you remember where it was?”

“Yeah, it’s an easy walk,” Madi tells her.

Clarke tucks the knives back into the cloth they keep them in, getting up to toss them in a bag. She keeps one in her hand. “You got your knife?”

Madi pulls the small knife out of the pocket of her pants as she watches Clarke toss the bag over her shoulder.

At Madi’s confusion, Clarke smiles. “Let’s go check out this beast, then.”

* * *

Madi isn’t wrong.

To a grounder child who had never seen such a thing, calling it a ‘beast’ is nothing but accurate, especially with the headlights rounded like eyes peering out from where it’s buried.

But to Clarke, it only has one name.

“ _Madi_ ,” Clarke says breathlessly, hands already roaming over part of the cool exterior exposed from under the debris Praimfaya had left behind.

“You found the Rover,” Clarke tells her excitedly.

* * *

It takes every sharpened edge of those knives to cut the charred trees and brush away, but Clarke’s excitement fuels Madi’s, and before they know it, they’re standing in front of the full glory of the Rover, looking almost completely unharmed.

Bellamy _would_ hide it in the trees before he left it, in hopes that it’d be here when they came back. She can’t believe she never truly thought to go looking for it.

“So, it’s not alive?” Madi asks, eyeing it warily.

“Not in the way you’re thinking,” Clarke says. “But give it some time in the sun.”

Madi just turns her skepticism on Clarke instead.

* * *

“You want me to get _inside_ it?” Clarke puts in a great effort to rein in her smile at the disbelief in Madi’s voice. “What’s going to happen?”

“There’s only one way to find out,” Clarke retorts, pulling open the door to the driver side and sliding in.

She lets Madi just watch her through the windshield, see that she’s fine, sitting in the Rover. She knows this is something completely new for her, and she can’t blame her for being leery.

But she knows Madi, and Clarke sees the exact moment that determination sparks in her eyes.

She’s yanking the passenger door open a second later, eyes roaming the interior for anything that could hurt them. She gets in, and very tentatively closes the door, almost bracing for something to happen.

Clarke smothers her smile by reaching for the buckle to stretch across Madi’s small body, the question in her eyes immediate.

“I never really learned how to drive one of these,” the buckle clicks, “I did it once, over two and a half years ago.” _When Roan’s soldiers forced her to drive or die, when Bellamy came for her_.

She turns the key, and the Rover roars to life, making Clarke’s blood thrum. Madi’s apprehension only seems to grow.

“So it may be a bumpy ride,” Clarke warns, and then presses on the pedal.

* * *

It _is_ a bumpy ride, the Rover jumpy over bumps and flying through the barren woods as Clarke gets a feel for it. But eventually, they get to a patch of smooth ground, and the wind, the speed, calls to Clarke.

And they go _faster_.

She looks over to Madi, and she doesn’t hide her smile this time. Not when Madi’s eyes are as wide as can be, the brightest smile Clarke has ever seen breaking across her face as her hair flies in every direction.

They go around and around, Clarke getting more comfortable, Madi getting braver, sticking her arm out the window to feel the air whipping by them.

And when the Rover’s power starts to ween, she steers it towards the mansion, bringing it to a halt right in front.

They look at each other simultaneously, matching grins on their faces. “See, now,” Clarke says, “was that so bad?”

Madi’s responding laugh is the best thing Clarke has heard in years. She feels it as much as Clarke does – the freedom, the possibilities.

* * *

That night, once they’ve come down from the high, Clarke reaches for the radio.

“I get why you have a thing for the Rover.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Didn't have a chance to post yesterday, sorry :)


	14. 15 - Are you still awake?

“So… we got lost,” Clarke tells him, sitting on the hood of the Rover.

She hears Madi’s snort from inside the vehicle, the sound echoing out from the open windows. “ _You_ got lost,” she calls, “I don’t even know where we’re going.”

Clarke rolls her eyes, doesn’t hide her smile. Madi’s in the back of the Rover, so there’s no one to call her out on it. “Hasn’t stopped you from telling me when to turn,” she shoots back teasingly. Clarke holds the button down through their exchange, just in case Bellamy can hear them. She wants him to hear Madi, know that she’s really not alone down here.

Madi knows all about him, all of them, and listens to her talk to them every day.

She just, hasn’t seemed to have any interest in talking to them herself.

Which Clarke gets. Madi hears all of these stories about the people in the sky, but that’s all they are to her – characters in a bedtime story. Clarke knows they’ll love Madi, and Madi will warm up to them once she gets used to the wide range of personalities. But until they get here, all she has are the images Clarke describes for her.

So Clarke holds the button so Bellamy can at least hear Madi’s voice while she calls Clarke out, and then continues laying out what they’ve seen so far on their first road trip away from the island. How neither of them have been happier in years, finding each other and their first ride in the Rover the only things beating it.

It took Clarke another week and a half to finally feel like she had a strong hold on controlling the Rover, Madi and her adding driving practice as another segment of their regimented routine.

And then they decided to break that routine, packing three days’ worth of food into the back of the Rover so they could check out the damage that Praimfaya inflicted where the bunker is, where her mom and Marcus, Miller and Jackson, Octavia and thousands of others are living for a little under three more years.

It’s a good thing they packed so much extra food, for what’s supposed to be a day’s ride. Because again, they’re lost. It all just looks the same – burnt tree here, singed rocks there, crunchy twigs and dirt everywhere.

She’s glad she brought the radio too. She wouldn’t want him to worry if she missed a day.

Clarke tilts her head back against the windshield, looking up at the night sky. There’s stars speckling the darkness, and she hopes that one of them isn’t a star at all, but a station, keeping her friends alive.

“I don’t want you to worry. I’m pretty sure I can get us back to the island if we can’t find the temple. We’ve driven around there enough that I can pick up what little landmarks there are. And,” she adds, smile turning to a smirk, “the Rover is still in one piece.”

She decides not to mention the scratches and dents that have coincidentally popped up on it over the past week and a half. All of his worry would transfer to the precious Rover.

 _No it wouldn’t_ , her conscience chides. He’d worry more that she’d get themselves killed by driving off a cliff, or into a tree or something.

Clarke shakes her head, focusing back on the radio, on Bellamy.

“I think we’ll find it tomorrow, I’ll keep you updated. Tell the others how awesome of a driver I am,” she says in goodbye.

Sliding off of the hood, she takes one more glimpse at the sky, trying to picture him up there listening.

She silently opens the back doors, slipping in as quietly as possible assuming Madi has already fallen asleep, and shuts them again. She’s learned Madi falls into slumber fast, and sleeps like a rock until Clarke wakes her up. But the way a dark pile of blankets shifts in the corner tells her otherwise.

“Are you still awake?” It’s too dark to see anything in the Rover, so Clarke pushes one of the doors back open so that the moonlight can shine inside.

“Does Bellamy really care about the Rover that much?” She asks, a question for a question.

Clarke moves to settle in next to Madi, grabbing one of the blankets they had taken from the mansion. “I like to tease him because he always had to be the one to drive it everywhere,” she explains. “But I’m sure he’s just freaking out that I’ll get us hurt because I drive it into a tree too.”

“Too?”

Clarke smiles in the dark. “He drove one into a tree on accident before Praimfaya.” _And then we were ambushed_ , she doesn’t say. “It can be dangerous if you don’t know how to drive it, which is why I wanted to practice so much before we left.”

From what little of Madi’s face Clarke can see, she’d say that Madi looks almost thoughtful. “I like the Rover.”

“Yeah, me too,” Clarke agrees.

Madi turns so that she’s laying on her back, staring up almost like if she looks hard enough, she’ll be able to see the stars through the ceiling. “I like–,” she pauses.

“You like…,” Clarke prods.

“I like the way I feel when we’re in the Rover. I don’t think I can sleep because of it,” she admits. “I don’t know how to say it. _Breik au_?”

But Clarke understands immediately, even if she feels a twinge in her heart. It’s the same feeling she’s felt since she pressed on that pedal the first time, and every time after. The same feeling that hasn’t settled since they left the island.

She’s not entirely sure what the word is for it in Madi’s language, but–

“Freedom,” Clarke says. “You feel free.”

Free from Praimfaya, free from the mansion, free from the island. It’s the same way Clarke felt taking those first steps off of the Dropship and onto Earth.

“Freedom,” Madi repeats, testing out the word slowly like she does whenever Clarke tells her a new word. She rolls back over so Clarke can see the glimmer of her smile in the moonlight. “I like the feeling of freedom,” she tells her on a yawn, before snuggling back under her mountain of blankets. “Bellamy must like it too,” she mumbles sleepily. Present tense, not past.

 _He does_. _You and him deserve every freedom the world has to offer_ , she wants to say.

Instead, Clarke turns her attention to the open back door, listening for any sound to convince her she should shut it again for their safety.

But there’s not even any bugs humming in the night.

They’re the only ones out here, and Clarke can’t bring herself to shut themselves inside like they do in the mansion at night.

So she gently pushes the other door open with her foot, a breeze traveling in.

She knows there’ll be no going back to the mansion permanently after this.

Huddling under her own blankets, Clarke turns to face Madi even though she can hear her even breaths, signalling she’s asleep.

“I like it too,” Clarke finally whispers, and shuts her eyes as another breeze brushes her cheek.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Breik au_ (verb): free


	15. 76 - You need to wake up because I can't do this without you.

Three years later, the fish start coming back.

“Uh, are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Madi calls from the shoreline, carefully working on rolling her pants up so that the ocean waves don’t soak them, and then routinely reaching up to adjust her beanie.

When she and Madi broke into the latest bunker, they took full advantage of the stock of clothes that was there. Madi adopted that hat, and she refuses to take it off, even when the sun is scorching them. (Clarke had made sure to tell her about Miller and his beanie the first time she caught sight of it.)

Clarke, makeshift spear in hand, doesn’t take her eyes off of the water where she’s wading, looking for any shine to flicker beneath. “How hard can it be?”

At that moment, a fish darts by, and Clarke jabs the spear at it, aiming for the kill.

And gets her spear jammed into the sandy floor of the shore.

“Apparently very,” Madi snorts, striding through the waves to reach her.

Clarke gives her a harmless glare before turning her attention back to the water. “If we had a net, then it would be easy,” Clarke reasons, eyes catching another glimmer in the water and missing yet again.

“Then make a net. Or we can use one from one of our traps,” Madi tells her, reaching out for the spear, which Clarke gives only half reluctantly.

“I would have if I had known we’d actually see a lot of them today,” Clarke mutters.

Three years.

It’s taken that long for the Earth to finally begin its healing, and Clarke and Madi have made it one of their many missions to find every last bit of evidence that finally, _finally_ , things are beginning to change.

There’s an area of vegetation just off of Becca’s island that seems to grow by the day, showing off a green that made Clarke cry the first time Madi pointed it out. She had to resist the urge to brush her hands over the soft greens in fear that she would stint their growth.

Bugs have come back in abundance, much to Madi’s dismay. Clarke would say she’s thrilled with any sign of life that reveals itself to them, but then she remembers all the griping and complaining Madi did the first time she was covered in mosquito bites and itchy all over.

They’ve heard little critters skittering around, and have gotten glimpses of stray fish starting to pop up here and there, but they’ve still stuck to the dried rations they find in the few bunkers they’ve scavenged through.

And it’s been enough.

Madi’s as healthy as ever, face maturing and curiosity bubbling, and while Clarke’s certainly not the same shape she was when Praimfaya hit, she likes to think that that’s for the better. She’s leaner, stronger. She can feel the muscles in her arms and legs and know that she’s doing well too.

But that doesn’t stop her from wanting to devour one of those fish from the school of them they saw meandering through the waters. There’s finally enough fish to start to hunt, and Clarke wants Madi to get a taste of something fresh.

A splash where Madi is catches Clarke’s attention, and there Madi is – arms holding the spear in a defensive position, and a fish flailing helplessly at the end Clarke had sharpened to a point.

“How did you do that?”

Madi just shrugs, head tilting to the side to observe the fish dangling in front of her. “Must be the Grounder in me.”

Clarke rolls her eyes. “All of you is Grounder,” she tells Madi, treading toward her to analyze the fish. No malformations, good coloring, one head, two eyes. Normal.

“I’ve got Skaikru too,” Madi reminds her, handing Clarke the spear so that she can give a closer inspection to the fish. Clarke smiles, the argument older than the fish swimming around them.

“That you are, _strik natblida._ I think I’m going to test this one out, make sure it’s safe before you eat it.” It may look normal, but Clarke remembers vividly what happened to Luna’s people when they ate radiated fish from the ocean. Even if the nightblood protects them like it had Luna, she had still suffered. And Clarke won’t allow anything to hurt Madi.

That night, they eat jerky as Clarke gets the fire going, and then she cooks the fish. The smell alone makes both of them reach for another piece of jerky.

When it’s cooked through, Clarke rips off a chunk of the meat, giving it a sniff before popping it into her mouth and chewing.

“How’s it taste?” Madi asks, eyeing the remnants of the cooked fish in a way that makes Clarke guilty. But she won’t risk Madi.

“Tastes like fish,” she tells her after swallowing. She resists the urge to take another piece, or even lick the fatty juices off of her fingers, not wanting to rub it in Madi’s face. Given a few days, Madi can eat all of the fatty fish her heart desires.

An hour later, Clarke’s stomach gives its first nauseous clench.

* * *

“Clarke,” she hears Madi say. “Clarke, _please_. You need to wake up.”

She tries to open her mouth and settle that worry that seems to be etched into Madi’s voice. But she can’t speak, can’t move.

Her stomach roils, her body wanting sleep and relief from the pain.

“ _Clarke!_ ” She hears again, but Madi’s too far away.

* * *

“Bellamy?” A pause, and then Madi’s uncertain voice echoes in Clarke’s ears. “I don’t know if you can hear me, or if you ever hear Clarke, but I need help. Clarke’s sick. Really sick. She ate a fish from the ocean and now she can’t get up. Her skin’s all red and it looks like it hurts. And if she’s awake, she’s throwing up and doesn’t know what’s going on.”

It hurts, but Clarke forces her eyes open, coming face-to-face with Madi’s watery ones glaring at the radio. Clarke shifts slightly, but then a pain she’s far too familiar with races through her body – irradiated skin.

“Now would be a good time for you to start talking on this box,” Madi demands, frustration and fear warring in her tone, all hesitancy gone.

Clarke rolls over on her bed roll, gagging on nothing and catching Madi’s attention. But Clarke’s too tired to say anything, lying back down and closing her eyes again.

“No Clarke, you need to stay awake,” she tells her, and Clarke can feel her kneeling on the rocky ground in an instant, right next to Clarke. “You need to wake up because I can’t do this without you,” Madi begs. She shakes Clarke’s shoulder, and to Clarke’s utter relief, it doesn’t start a new wave of nausea.

“No fish for you,” Clarke mumbles, near unintelligible.

Madi’s breathless laugh is hysterical and relieved, all in one.

* * *

“Clarke’s getting better. She’s sleeping a lot, but her skin is getting better and she’s drinking water. I– I thought you would want to know so you’re not worrying. I don’t really get how this works, with you way up in the sky, but I hope you’re okay too. All of you. Clarke can’t wait for you all to come back.

I can’t either.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know my update days have been breaking the "Wednesday schedule" a tad, just bear with me a bit. I'm adjusting to having no free time again :P
> 
> But hey, I'm one behind right now, so double updates this week :D The next one should be up on Friday!


	16. 94 - What time is it?

“What time is it?” Madi sighs, dropping the hunk of rock she was hauling to the side, and wiping the sweat away from her eyes. Despite her love for the beanie, it was carefully placed in the Rover an hour ago after Clarke lectured her for the thousandth time about heat exhaustion.

Clarke tosses her own piece of rubble near the ever-growing pile and takes a moment to glance at the sky. “Looks like about noon.” She squints as the sun blares down on them, immediately tamping down on the hope she gets every time she looks to the sky.

Madi comes to stand beside her, one of her hands shielding her eyes from the sun’s brightness as she takes her own quick glimpse at the sun.

“So another hour or so?” She asks, turning her attention to Clarke.

Clarke stares up for a second longer, then looks at the small pile they’ve accumulated over the past couple of hours. It’s next to the one from the week before, which is next to the one from the week before that, and so on, and so on.

Then she focuses on the remaining mountain of it that still buries the bunker, and a different kind of exhaustion starts to make its reappearance in her bones.

They’ve got a year before the ship comes back and the people from the bunker can come out, and more and more, Clarke’s beginning to wonder if even with the help of her friends, they’ll ever be able to clear away the entrance to the bunker so that everyone can get out.

But she doesn’t tell Madi that.

The bunker’s buried under the remains of the temple, and each time Clarke sees it, she feels herself drag a little more.

They’ve come every week for over a year to work on clearing some more rocks and debris, and even if to her, it looks like there’s no end in sight, for Madi, it’s a part of the routine they’ve structured to keep themselves going.

The first day of their week, every week, they drive the Rover to the temple and they clear. It’s how they make sure they’re not losing days, and with one more year to go, their countdown is more important now than ever.

“How about we call it early today,” Clarke says, putting a smile on that she knows Madi can probably see right through. “We can go to the river to cool down and see if there’s any fish to catch.”

(Because after two more bouts of ARS from radiated fish, Clarke was finally able to eat the fish without getting sick, and they haven’t stopped eating it since.)

Madi just eyes her skeptically, like she knew she would. “You don’t want to do our normal time?”

Normal time. What did that even mean anymore? With just the two of them, why was there even the need to keep such regimented track of their time?

She knew the answer of course.

Bellamy, her mom…

They kept track for them, to be as ready as they could possibly be for when it was time for them all to be reunited. Recently though, some days were easier to remember that than others.

She’s pulled out of her thoughts by the crunching sound of Madi’s boots heading towards the never-ending debris and picking up a piece that’s manageable for her to carry. At Clarke’s questioning look, Madi lifts her eyebrows. “Do we want this cleared in a year, or what?”

And like every time Clarke gets lost in her thoughts, when that hopelessness starts to tickle the edges of her mind, Madi plows through them, scaring them away with her relentless determination.

The smile Clarke gives her this time is genuine, and they both know it. “Half an hour, and then we go wash off. If it’s cooler next week, we’ll stay a little longer to make up the time.”

Madi’s responding smile is proud in a way Clarke never thought she’d need from a child so much younger than her. “That’s more like it,” she tells Clarke, and then hurls her rock onto the top of the pile.

* * *

With the heat of the day, when they settle to sleep that night, bellies full on as much fish as they could catch, they end up on the hood of the Rover, staring up at the sky.

Sometimes, Clarke stays up all night, just watching the stars glisten and imagining Bellamy and the crew looking back down at their healing planet.

Other times, even glancing up hurts.

But after Madi updated Bellamy on the progress they made today (something she’s wanted to do more and more), she had wanted to sleep on the hood because the air was cooler outside than in the back with the doors opened, and Clarke could never deny her such a simple request.

Still, today is one of those days where it hurts.

“I know you get sad sometimes when you think about them.”

Clarke startles, thinking Madi had fallen asleep and unprepared for her words.

Madi turns her head so that Clarke can see her eyes glistening in the light from the moon and stars. “It’s alright. I don’t really remember much about my family, but if I couldn’t see you for years, I’d be sad too.”

Even though she says the words in a whisper, they echo like thunder in Clarke’s ears.

She didn’t want Madi to know this piece of her even existed, how sometimes that tickle of hopelessness ends up being a clutch that Clarke has to fight off before the morning comes. But she does, because a reluctant and sleepy eleven-year-old brightens every corner that doubt lingers in when she begins grumbling that it’s too early for lessons or work.

Not knowing what words would be enough to even begin to explain that, Clarke just reaches out for Madi, pulling her into her side and holding onto her tight. They don’t do this as often as they did when she was younger, but they both know that sometimes they just need the other close.

“You’re my _seingeda_ too, you know that, right?” Clarke whispers back, resting her head on top of Madi’s.

Her head shifts when Madi nods. “ _Sha, nomi_ ,” Madi mumbles sleepily.

And it’s not that feeling of hopelessness that keeps Clarke up for the rest of the night, but the relentless smile that’s been on her face since hearing that one, scarily big, seemingly right word for the first time: _nomi_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _seingeda_ : family  
>  _sha, nomi_ : yeah, mom  
>  _nomi_ : mom
> 
> I'll catch up! Promise :)


	17. 37 - Do you think they could have loved me?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyyy all! So updates had to take a slight hiatus even though this is indeed a hiatus project, lol. But fear not, updates will be starting to return on a regular basis. So here's the scoop:
> 
> 1\. To catch up, I'll be double posting for a few weeks, one ficlet on Wednesday, one on Thursday (yes, that means another one will be up tomorrow)..  
> 2\. "But hey, you've totally said that before and then it fell through." Yes, totally true, guess you'll just have to trust me....

“Do you think they could have loved me?” Madi asks on the 1, 827th day, voice rough from disuse and tears.

They’re in the back of the Rover, huddled together close under the furs, purely for some sense of comfort.

Because they didn’t come down.

Because they’re not here.

Because Clarke completely lost it.

Because once she had calmed down, she somehow had found herself wrapped up in the furs by herself with Madi stroking her hair, and that role reversal was just a little too much to bear after everything else that had happened over the past two days.

So she had tugged Madi under the blankets, and they let their tears soak the furs as they processed the crushing realization that after five years, it was still just the two of them, without a delinquent in sight.

At Madi’s question, Clarke hesitates before responding, instead choosing to reach up and comb her fingers through Madi’s hair in the same calming way Madi had done for her the day before.

She waits, cataloguing her own thoughts, her own feelings, and tries to figure out what’s different.

Her throat feels raw from the screams she’d been holding in from the beginning. Her body feels tired from her fitful sleep where one delinquent or other made an appearance every time she closed her eyes again.

But her heart? Her mind? Those spots where she holds them, him, closest?

Nothing’s different, and it takes her a moment to figure out why.

Clarke hums, continuing her ministrations on Madi’s hair. “Madi,” she whispers, pulling back so that her daughter can look up at her, read her face as she listens to what Clarke says. “I’m sorry if I scared you yesterday,” Clarke starts, knowing that she gave herself her first moment of weakness since Praimfaya, but it wasn’t fair to Madi to have to deal with it. Not like that.

And it’s a pure testament to how scared Madi actually was when her only response is to huddle close again and mumble an “it’s okay” into Clarke’s shoulder.

Clarke’s responding sigh lifts Madi up a little on her chest before she releases the breath. “It’s not okay, and I should have prepared us for the possibility that they wouldn’t be able to make it in exactly five years. That wasn’t fair to them either.”

Madi tilts her head enough that Clarke can see the confusion start to settle in. “What do you mean?” She asks warily.

“I mean,” Clarke whispers into her hair, “that if Raven were to radio right now, she’d yell at me to give her some _fucking_ slack.”

“That’s a new word,” Madi picks up instantly, her curiosity pulling her from the topic at hand for the briefest of moments.

Clarke can’t help the small chuckle that bubbles out of her. “It’s only to be used on truly special occasions, to really get a point across,” she reveals secretively as she squeezes Madi tight.

Madi squeezes back. “You think they’re still up there?” She asks, sounding only the slightest bit wistful.

Searching to the parts of herself that still feel the same as they ever have since that first day in that first year when she found that radio and called to them for that first time, she grasps onto that hope inside her that refuses to waver.

“We’re still breathing,” Clarke says, echoing a conversation from a lifetime ago. “After five years on this crazy, burnt planet, we’re still breathing. So I still have hope that after five years up in that crazy hunk of metal in space, they’re still breathing too.”

They have to be.

Madi contemplates her words, brows scrunching thoughtfully. “So what do we do until they figure out how to get down here?”

“They need time, so we’ll give that to them. And until then,” Clarke starts, “I think we need a break from our routine, don’t you?”

Madi smiles, almost like she’s amused. “This will be our third day breaking it,” she reminds Clarke. But after keeping the structure for so long, Clarke can see the gleam in Madi’s eyes, the hint of rebellion that’s building up in herself just as quickly.

“I think it’s time for a little fun, don’t you?”

“Can you teach me to drive?” Madi hedges carefully, as if she’s been saving the question for just the right moment.

To Clarke’s credit, she does ponder it for a solid five seconds before caving in at the pleading eyes Madi lays on her. “Sure,” she says, following Madi as she immediately pops up to hop out of the back of the Rover, “it can be fun.”

“I didn’t know _you_ could be fun, though,” Madi teases, mood instantly shifting as she races around to the driver’s side of the vehicle.

Clarke just jumps out of the back, looking up at the sky and calling on that hope again. “I can be fun,” she mutters, not to Madi, but to that big hunk of metal floating up there somewhere.

She ends up glaring at an empty, blue sky, but she’s sure he’d appreciate the reference.

* * *

Hours later, when Madi has managed to add at least three new dents to the Rover and driven them at speeds Clarke has never ventured to hit, they end up back at the lab.

They both get out of the Rover and stand side by side at the entrance. “We haven’t been here in a while,” Madi points out, looking to Clarke, waiting to hear what they’re doing.

Clarke just nods and moves to push the entrance door open. “We haven’t had a reason to,” she grunts as the pressure on the door gives way.

“And now we do?” Madi asks, treading forward into the lab slowly, immediately stopping when she hits the first of the hundreds of sketches spanning the floors and walls.

Clarke comes up behind her, giving her a little nudge forward. “Now, I have a story to tell you. One of warriors and monsters and a castle in the sky.”

Madi nods before continuing her careful trek forward. “Let’s update Bellamy first.”

And despite the lingering pain and disappointment that’s settled deep into her bones, Clarke finds herself smiling as she follows along behind Madi.

* * *

After, when they’re scrunched up on the lone couch in the lab and the story is done, Clarke adds one more piece as Madi drifts off.

“And those seven warriors in the sky, Madi, they are going to love you so much,” she murmurs softly, “every part of them will love you the moment they meet you.”

“When?” Madi mumbles incoherently, probably not even realizing she responded.

Clarke tucks her in close.

“Soon,” she whispers into Madi’s hair, letting that hope wrap around them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I said, another ficlet will be up tomorrow - last one with Clarke and Madi for a bit..... AND. On a major plus, though I'll just be hitting the halfway mark in this fic, we're more than halfway through the hiatus, so, there's that.


	18. 28 - That's almost exactly the opposite of what I meant.

“Madi, load the guns,” Clarke demands urgently, never taking her eyes off of the foreign ship in the sky, peeking into her rifle’s scope every few seconds to see more and more that tells her they’re not safe out in the open like this.

Eligius Corporation.

Prisoner Transport.

“All of them?” Madi responds instantly, going from sleepy to excited to alert and ready to help, with only the slightest hint of incredulity at the sudden urgency in Clarke’s orders.

They just _found_ those guns a few months ago in a bunker scavenge. They haven’t needed guns in the six years they’ve been together. And now Clarke’s asking her to get every single one of them ready for immediate use when it’s supposed to be their friends coming down from the sky.

“All of them,” Clarke repeats, her initial rush of excitement and anticipation now combining with adrenaline and fear, racing through her all at once. She gives Madi a nudge toward the Rover when she turns to see her eyes trained on the ship as well. “Madi, move the Rover and get under the trees. _Now_.”

Madi moves back toward the trees, but halts after that lone step. “What about you?” She asks Clarke, her own anxiety only showing in her eyes that keep flitting over Clarke’s shoulder to the ship behind her.

Clarke slides her rifle onto her back, moving a step away from Madi and toward the slope of hill that would bring her closer to the ship. “I’m going to go check out who’s on that ship, stay under the trees and _stay hidden_ until I come back,” she instructs, fighting every instinct inside her that tells her to take Madi and run in the opposite direction. Back towards the lab or the mansion, anywhere that doesn’t have people, _prisoners_ , in it.

If these people are good, then they need to know. But there are no good guys.

So if they’re a threat, they _definitely_ need to know.

“If anyone comes near you, shoot them. Aim for their legs,” she calls to Madi over the jets of the ship, getting louder by the second as it moves to land.

Madi nods in response, takes one more glance at the offending object landing just on the outskirts of their green land, and then heads to the driver’s side of the Rover to climb in.

Clarke races down the hill the moment the Rover starts rolling back into the tree line, ducking behind any foliage cover that she can find. But the closer she gets to the ship, the less places there are for her to conceal herself.

The ground shudders as the ship settles onto the ground just as she hits the bottom of the hill, where the last patch of trees lie before the lands open up to nothing but burnt Earth. Breathless, Clarke shuffles behind an outlier bush under that last ring of trees, settling onto her stomach and pulling her rifle around to get a look through the scope again.

She sees those same words mocking her – Eligius Corporation, Prisoner Transport – as the ship stills and quiets.

“If it’s not our friends, who are they?”

Clarke startles as she whips her head in time to see Madi settle into the same position Clarke is in, resting her own rifle on her shoulder to check its scope.

“What–,” Clarke stutters out, anger and panic rising simultaneously. “I said move the Rover and _hide_ , not follow me!” She whisper-shouts.

Madi has the audacity to roll her eyes before squinting into the scope. “You said to move the Rover and get under the trees. The Rover is moved and,” she tilts her head up, “I’m currently hiding under the trees, so I’m doing exactly what you told me to do.”

Clarke openly gapes, sputtering out some exasperated sound in place of absolutely losing it at the moment. “That’s almost exactly the opposite of what I meant.”

Madi ignores Clarke’s response in favor of peering into her scope again. “Nothing’s happening. It’s like when the Rover shuts down – a sleeping beast – only, way bigger. A sleeping monster,” she settles on.

“I’m more concerned about the monsters inside it,” Clarke mutters, moving back into position.

“If they are monsters,” Madi says, leaning away from the scope to look at Clarke, “we do what you always say in the story.”

A chill runs down Clarke’s back, knowing she never intended for the monsters in her story to become part of their reality again. “We kill them all,” Clarke responds on reflex, having said it over and over since the first time she told Madi the story of the warriors and their castle.

It’s then though, that the sleeping monster comes to life again as one of the hatches on the side of the ship pops open on a hiss. Sliding out and down until it settles onto the dusty Earth, the hatch becomes a bridge running from inside the ship to the ground beneath.

“There’s something moving inside,” Madi whispers, alert in a way Clarke has never seen.

Clarke looks into her own scope again in time to see the same movement. “Not something,” she whispers back, “someone.”

“A lot of someones,” Madi comments as they watch a man and a women peer out of the opening, searching, their own guns held ready to fire. When they deem it clear, they move further down the ramp, where more armed people move to file out of the ship, making Clarke’s stomach plummet further and further.

She ducks her head, trying to keep calm as she lets her rifle fall to her side. The two of them were going to be no match for dozens of armed prisoners.

“What are they doing with those people in the back?” Madi questions, eye never leaving her scope.

Clarke looks up, eyes squinting to see what Madi’s talking about and finding it instantly. In the back, there’s a small group of people being shuffled out by a last few armed people. The first one out is ragged with long hair and a beard covering his face, the next is smaller with short black hair blowing in the wind.

“Are they the prisoners?” Madi asks, pointing to the words that Clarke is already too familiar with. “Their hands are bound,” she notes.

Clarke squints again, trying to see as much as she can with just her eyes. “I don’t think so,” she says, only half-aware. Because the other half is stuck watching the third bound person appear from the ship.

A woman.

One who shoves back the moment one of the armed guards pushes her along.

One who continues on proudly even as she continues to limp forward down the ramp.

Clarke gasps, the sound strangled for all kinds of reasons as she scrambles to pull her rifle up to get a closer look.

“Clarke?” Madi calls at Clarke’s sudden movements. “Clarke, what is it?”

But she can’t find the words to respond, can only focus all of her energy into holding in her sob as she sees the woman turn her head to spit some kind of retort to one of the guards.

As Raven gets shoved to the ground when the guard doesn’t like what she has to say.

As Monty turns back to help her, despite the other guards beginning to shout at him.

As Murphy, and Emori, and Harper, and Echo begin to emerge from inside the ship too, all looking ready to fight despite the guards pointing guns into their backs to herd them along.

As the first one, the ragged one, as _Bellamy_ turns as well, and proceeds to plow himself into the nearest guard without the slightest hint of hesitation, slamming into the ground and taking the guard that pushed Raven with him.

As a gunshot rings out, making Madi jump and Clarke see white.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Officially halfway through, my friends. See ya next week :)


	19. 30 - Can I sit here? The other tables are full.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 19 chapters in, and I feel like we haven't seen a whole lot of Monty. Time to change that..
> 
> (Also, we're heading back to Bellamy's POV.....)

“Can I sit here? The other tables are full.”

The words are odd enough, awkward enough, that all Bellamy can do is lift his head to look at Monty. Bellamy raises an eyebrow at him, but only gets Monty patiently staring at him expectantly.

Bellamy makes a show of looking around the area they all had designated suitable for eating after they had shoved some miscellaneous tables and chairs into the room, making far too much seating for a mere seven people. He makes the obvious, well, obvious, when his glance around the room to all of the empty tables is slow and deliberate.

They’re the only two in here.

When Bellamy redirects his raised eyebrow, and undoubtedly confused look, on Monty, he lasts for another moment or so before he heaves a sigh and plops into the seat directly across from Bellamy. “That was supposed to break the ice,” Monty huffs, glaring as much as Monty is possibly capable of glaring.

Bellamy blinks, still not fully caught up on what’s going on. “I was unaware there was ice that needed to be broken,” he hedges, “but uh, consider it done?”

Monty rolls his eyes in response, folding his arms in front of him on the table and resting his chin on his arms, eyes looking up at Bellamy. “Murphy told me about finding Clarke’s cell in the Skybox,” he explains matter-of-factly.

If Bellamy hadn’t been expecting this exact conversation all week from at least one of them, if not all six in some way or other, he would have flinched at the first mention of her name.

But, he is prepared, so though her name cuts straight through him like always, he lets the initial hurt wash over him so that the dull ache settles again. “Being that was a week ago, I’m surprised it’s taken this long for word to get around. News travels fast when the population is a grand total of seven,” he quips, closing the book he had been reading and reaching up to adjust his glasses.

Monty seems to be settling in for a full-length conversation.

With a sigh, Monty rolls his head so that he’s cradling it in his arms, eyes remaining on Bellamy. “I’m trying to ask a question here.”

“Being the first one was about needing a seat in a room full of empty chairs, I really can’t begin to guess what your next one will be.”

Monty turns his head so that it’s buried in his arms as he lets out a groan. His body swells with the deep breath he takes before lifting his head to look back at Bellamy. “Harper and I broke up.”

“I’m sorry,” Bellamy responds instantly, replaying the conversation so far in his head, trying to see if Monty was making it known without saying it. “Are you okay?”

If Monty is being weird because he needs to talk about him and Harper, then Bellamy can do whatever he needs.

But instead, Monty jolts up in his seat, immediately alert and pointing one faintly scarred finger at Bellamy across the table. “That,” he says, sounding equal parts frustrated and determined, “that’s the question I’m trying to ask.”

Bellamy pauses, which Monty capitalizes on.

“You literally ask if everyone is okay all of the time, but the moment someone tries to check on you, you shut us out and go off on your own,” Monty accuses in a way that is caring at the same time, which is a true testament to who Monty is as a person.

Squinting, Bellamy moves to lean back in his chair and cross his arms. “So…”

“So this is me,” Monty says, mirroring Bellamy’s position, “trying to ask if you’re okay without actually asking if you’re okay because I know you’ll just talk around the question until we somehow end up talking about how I am instead.”

Bellamy opens his mouth, but Monty cuts him off. “No. If the next words out of your mouth are going to be some deflection on how you’re completely fine and that seeing Clarke’s cell had absolutely no effect on you, I’m calling bullshit.”

Silence follows, Bellamy at a loss and Monty taking a breath. “I’m fine, for clarification’s sake,” Monty explains. “Harper and me breaking up sucks, and I’m sure there’s going to be some super awkward moments until we get used it, but,” he pauses, seeming to consider his words, “ _I’m_ okay. I know I am because I know exactly how not okay I was when Jasper died. And I know that I had Harper to help me through it, especially when it came crashing back to me when I had more than two minutes to myself up here to actually think.”

Bellamy feels himself deflate, shoulders sagging at the mention of Jasper and knowing how hard it is to say the name of the person you cared most for when they’re dead.

“But you?” Monty goes on, leaning forward and clasping his healed hands together. “When you lost Clarke, you lost your Jasper and your Harper all in one person, and you spent five minutes letting yourself feel that pain and then you just – stopped. You stopped acknowledging it and you stopped talking about anything other than what and who needed fixing, and I still don’t think you’ve really acknowledged the fact that a week ago you stood in the last place that Clarke lived before going to Earth and proceeded to tell Murphy to seal it up for good.”

“I–,” Bellamy tries, but falls short. His eyes are burning with the hurt he’s been trying to embrace all week long.

The hurt that tells him that she’s still living on through every aching beat of his heart. Instead, he releases a breath through his nose and rests his elbows on the table, letting his head fall forward.

Monty reaches out to take Bellamy’s hands, forcing him to look up. “You don’t have to tell me that you’re okay, especially if you’re not. But know that we’re all here for you too. You care for us constantly, but we can do that for you too. That’s what a family does,” Monty finishes, squeezing Bellamy’s hands with his scarred ones.

Instead of forcing a reply, Bellamy nods his head, gently squeezing back before letting go and standing up.

“I’m not okay,” he finally gets out as he pushes his chair in, and the words, while minimal, hit with maximum pain. _He’s not okay_.

Monty nods his head thoughtfully. Not in an ‘I told you so,’ but in an ‘I understand.’

“I’m not okay,” Bellamy repeats, “but I’m getting there.” He picks up his book and focuses on looking at the cover instead of at Monty watching him. “Thank you,” he adds belatedly.

Monty’s responding smile is one of small triumphs. “Like I said, that’s what families do. And I get it, I know.”

Bellamy wants to ask _what_ Monty knows.

But he already knows the answer, and Bellamy wonders if _he_ was the only one who didn’t know, or at the very least didn't acknowledge it, when it really mattered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The reunion is coming nearer and nearer....


	20. 39 - How long have you been standing there?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just as a heads up, there is some _slight_ Bellamy/Echo in this one..

On the three year anniversary of being in space, Monty surprises them all.

“So… Don’t ask for the logistics, and don’t ask for whether there is any way of improving it, ‘cause I tried just about anything I could,” he starts as he makes his way down the hall to them, which immediately catches everyone’s attention. If nothing else, Monty is always pretty direct, and the fact that he’s talking around the point while lugging a crate in front of him only peaks their interest.

They’re all gathered near one of the windows of the ring, watching as they orbit the Earth like they’ve done for the past two anniversaries of their arrival.

Everyone turns to Monty expectantly as they watch him carefully place the crate down right in front of the window. Bellamy takes a step forward to peer inside, bending down to pull two mismatched bottles from the crate, noting the numerous other odd bottles resting inside. Standing up, he lifts one to hold in front of his face, squinting at the slightly off-colored liquid sloshing around in the full bottle.

Monty steps forward, taking the lifted bottle from Bellamy. “Murphy had mentioned that the algae was starting to grow in surplus a few months back, so I made sure there was still going to be enough for us to eat and then I took a bunch to do some experimenting. And I–”

“Hey!” Murphy interrupts. “You said you had no clue why the algae had settled into growing at a normal rate again,” he accuses.

Monty only looks marginally guilty. “I didn’t want to get your hopes up, and then when I got it right I wanted to save it as a surprise. We’re officially on the downhill slide – three years down, two more to go.”

Raven steps forward at that, pulling the other bottle Bellamy was holding from his hands and holding it up to scrutinize more thoughtfully than he had. A wicked smile grows on her face a moment later.

Catching the smile, Harper walks over to the crate to pick up another bottle. “So we’re celebrating with…,” she says, less hesitant with talking to Monty directly than Bellamy’s heard since they broke up.

“Moonshine.” Everyone turns to Raven as she responds, popping open the lid on her bottle and taking a whiff at the contents within. She coughs a second later, the sound echoing partially like a laugh. ”Holy shit Monty, it smells fucking awful.”

Monty nods, his own smirk settling in, “it tastes fucking awful too, but it’ll get the job done.”

“What job?” Echo asks, speaking for the first time, eyeing the bottles in everyone’s hands suspiciously.

Murphy snorts, crouching down to take two bottles and handing one to Emori’s waiting hand. “Of getting completely wasted,” he says, before opening up his and taking a large gulp, instantly choking on a cough as he swallows. Emori pats his back hard as his coughing subsides, only to be filled by almost-hysterical laughter. “Holy fuck, it _is_ awful.”

“Is it safe to drink?” Bellamy asks, immediately hesitating from reaching for his own bottle, trying to map out a way to get everyone else away from theirs before it kills them.

But Monty just rolls his eyes before taking a swig of his own, barely coughing, telling Bellamy that Monty has absolutely been test-tasting this for some time. “It’s algae-flavored liquor,” he deadpans, “it’s not going to kill anyone, but I make no promises on what kind of hangovers we’ll have tomorrow.”

“I’m sold,” Raven says, just before drinking a mouthful of moonshine, gulping it down and smirking like a champ when she doesn’t even cough.

It’s enough of a go-ahead for Harper and Emori to start drinking as well, and then it’s just him and Echo watching their friends drink and laugh, and slowly and gradually, get absolutely drunk.

“What’s ‘wasted’?” Echo questions, observing the rowdiness progressing in front of them with an untrustworthy eye.

The question, as simple as it is, draws an amused smile out of Bellamy. He checks the crate to find exactly what he thought he would – two final bottles. He picks them up and holds one out to Echo, who pauses briefly before awkwardly gripping it by its thin neck.

“Only one way to find out,” Bellamy tells her before chugging some of the moonshine from his bottle. He sucks in air through his teeth as the burn of it settles right into his stomach in the most satisfying of ways.

He’s already taking another gulp as he watches Echo hesitantly bring the bottle to her lips to take a small sip.

Bellamy smiles encouragingly, and then lets the moonshine do its job.

* * *

Hours later, when all that’s left are empty bottles rolling across the floor of the control room after they somehow migrated there with giggling and sleeping people sprawled across various surfaces, Bellamy has just enough hindsight to do a headcount. He counts to six a handful of times, then realizes that he’s been counting himself and that he’s still one person short.

Stumbling back from where they had made their slow, drunken expedition, he makes his way to the window where they had started their celebrations to find Echo with her back to him, swaying from side to side while staring down at her planet.

Bellamy watches silently as she continues her motions, her head continuously lolling from side to side, bringing another smile to his face.

He must do more than just smile, probably lets out a small chuckle without realizing it, because a second later she’s turning towards him with eyes wide and bright. “How long have you been standing there?” She asks, continuing her sway as she makes her way towards him.

Bellamy’s smile only widens. “How long have you been swaying like that?” He counters.

She only hums in response, closing her eyes as she reaches him. “The music,” she explains, her body refusing to stay in one spot, “I’m dancing to the music.”

“And what does this music sound like?” Bellamy indulges, moving to rest his hands on the outsides of her arms to try and still her. Watching the movements is starting to make him dizzy.

Eyes still closed, Echo suddenly stills. She opens her eyes, beseeching Bellamy in a way he’s never seen. “Like home,” she whispers, eyes moving to his lips. “The music sounds like home.”

And then, before Bellamy’s clouded brain can even begin to function enough to see where things are heading, Echo tilts up until her lips are colliding with his sloppily.

It’s a cold shock to Bellamy’s system, pulling him from his drunken stupor and instantly placing a leaden weight in his gut.

Echo pushes forward, lips still against his.

As gently as Bellamy possibly can, he pulls back – holding her in place where his hands are still resting on her arms.

This time, when her eyes open, they’re filled with a sadness that resonates in his bones as understanding dawns on her. “I miss my home,” she admits, taking a step back out of Bellamy’s reach, but never looking away from him.

Bellamy sighs, dragging a hand through his hair. “I do too,” he agrees, glancing past Echo to see Earth gliding by in the window. “But until we can get back to that home,” he gestures to the window, “we have to do the best we can here to make this place feel like home.”

At that, Echo sighs, drawing him back to her sad eyes. “Sometimes home isn’t a place, Bellamy,” she tells him softly. “Sometimes… it’s a person.”

With the remnants of the moonshine scattering his brain, Bellamy feels his eyebrows scrunch, watches as Echo smiles gently. “I do not mean this unkindly, but I think your home wasn’t Earth, but the person who was left there.”

 _Ah_ , Bellamy thinks. Or maybe says aloud as he moves to slide down to the floor and lean against the wall of the hallway.

Echo moves to join him, leaving a fair amount of space between them. “I never told you, but I am sorry – for all that has happened and for the loss of your home.”

Bellamy just heaves a deep, heavy sigh, not having the words or the energy to respond.

So much for celebrating.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nooo clue if algae-based moonshine is even remotely possible ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	21. 72 - You deserve so much better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New Year's resolution: A chapter a day until I'm allll caught up.  
> We'll see if _that_ happens, lol..

“Ow, _fuck_ ,” Bellamy swears as he grips his hand in a fist to his chest.

He pulls it away quickly to glance at the damage, only to reapply the pressure when he sees the blood flowing freely over his palm and down his arm.

 _Shit_. One day.

Raven had left him to sort through the scrap metal Murphy and Emori have been collecting, trying to figure out which pieces are usable for Raven to reinforce the outside of the ship. He’s been injury-free for five years, and it figures that Raven finally lets him start helping out with ship repairs and he manages to slice his hand open on the rusted edge of metal the following day.

Not risking another glimpse at his hand, he moves as discreetly as he can through the halls to Harper’s infirmary, careful not to drip blood onto the floor as he goes.

He sends silent thanks to whoever’s listening when he sees that it’s empty when he gets there, allowing him to shuffle through their supplies and wrap his hand hastily. He rushes through the motions, ones he hasn’t had to do in years, and moves to put everything he touched back in its place.

His good hand hovers over their remaining antibiotics, fewer than what they started with from the few illnesses everyone has dealt with the past few years. Harper rations it strictly, only using them when absolutely necessary.

Bellamy readjusts a turned bottle, and then turns to leave and change his bloodied shirt before making it back to the scrap room before anyone notices he’s gone.

It’s just a cut, no need to waste any medicine on it.

* * *

“How’re you doing in here?” Raven calls out as she walks into the room.

Bellamy pops his head up from behind the pile of metal he was working on before cutting his hand. “Still scanning through piles to see what’s the least rusted,” he tells her, watching her eye him.

“You spent the past hour just staring at the piles seeing which one you want to go through first?” She asks dubiously.

She takes a step toward him, and Bellamy turns his body so his hand is hidden from her line of sight. “Just making sure we’re using the best pieces to line the ship.”

Raven snorts, making another step toward him. “We’ll be using more rusted pieces than not, so quit being so nit-picky.”

“Then I’ll start with this one,” he says, making a show of picking up a piece from the top of the pile in front of him. “I’ve got this, you go fix some unfixable part of the ship.”

That makes her pause where she is, exactly what Bellamy was hoping for. “If you say so, Monty said the soup will be done in an hour or so.”

“Cool, can’t wait,” Bellamy answers, far more enthusiastically than he should when algae soup has been on the menu for literally ever.

Raven just eyes him again before leaving, and Bellamy ignores the throbbing ache in his hand in favor of actually trying to find at least a few pieces of scrap that are rust-free before they eat.

He makes sure to cover the wrappings with a sleeve at dinner, and then heads to his room straight after, not wanting to give anyone a chance to notice and tell him to quit trying to help Raven.

He’s sure the burning pulse will dull by morning, he just needs to rest.

* * *

“Bellamy?” He hears his name echo from outside of his room.

He moves to get up, but his limbs feel like weights holding him down. “ _Bellamy_ ,” the voice echoes again, still sounding so far away as his body starts to sway and move, not how he intends to, but as if someone is shaking him. “Bellamy, _wake up_ ,” the voice demands, shaking him harder and making his head spin.

And as his head spins, the voice is joined by another and another, each one louder than the last:

_Asleep._

_Fever._

_Sick._

And then, more urgently, and for some voices, more angrily:

_Hand._

_Infection._

_Fuck._

It’s then that he feels the burning radiating through his entire body, centered at one point where his hastily-applied bandages are hiding an inferno.

 _Idiot_ , is what he thinks, and hears, just as the voices get muffled and his mind goes fuzzy, letting him drift off into nothing.

* * *

When Bellamy opens his eyes, he finds himself in Harper’s infirmary for the second time in so many days. This time, however, he’s lying in one of the spare beds they had placed in there in case of emergencies.

He feels the movements of someone sitting next to the bed, so he turns his attention from the ceiling to accept the lecture from whoever it is that decided to wait for him to wake up.

He turns, expecting an angry Raven or a concerned Monty or a hovering Harper.

“Mom?” He croaks, voice strained from disuse and shock as he moves to sit up in bed.

Because there, sitting to the right of him with a needle and thread in hand, is Aurora Blake, as calm and serene as he’s ever seen her.

At his movements, she looks up and smiles at him softly. “Hey honey,” she says, gently pushing him back to lie down. He goes willingly if for no other reason than he’s too consumed taking her in and that she just _touched_ him and he _felt_ it. “You’re still recovering, don’t overdo it.”

The shock settles into disbelief the longer he gapes at her and she continues to watch him back.

“Am I–,” he starts, almost too afraid to ask. “Shit,” he settles back into his pillow, “don’t tell me an infection is what kills me.”

His mom chuckles, light and happy in a way she never was on the Ark. “Oh baby, your friends said the same exact thing. That there’s no way after everything you’ve done, a cut on your hand was going to be what did you in.”

 _Everything you’ve done_.

It twists him up instantly, making his heart sink. “Mom,” he starts, voice cracking, “I know I messed up. And I didn’t take care of O like you wanted and I’ve done – God, fucking awful things. I’m so–”

He's stopped by Aurora shushing him, humming as she runs her hand gently over his face. The gesture has Bellamy closing his eyes and fighting back the sting of tears. He hasn’t seen this softness in his mother since he was a toddler.

“Bellamy,” she sighs in the way mothers do, not continuing until he opens his eyes to look at her again. “I want you to take care of yourself, okay? Don’t let this be the end when you still have so much left to live for.”

He closes his eyes on a sigh, ready to ask what she could possibly mean, but when he opens his eyes to look at her again, his heart quite literally lodges in his throat.

“Now,” Gina says from where his mother was sitting just seconds ago, leaning back in the chair and crossing her arms with a look of amusement, “what kind of garden variety heroics got you stuck back up on the Ark?”

“ _Gina_ ,” Bellamy breathes out, eyes eagerly taking in everything he didn’t that last time he saw her, starting with that beautiful smirk.

“Bellamy,” she says back, smirk turning to a smile as she leans forward to comb her fingers through his curls, the memory of the last time she did that sending a shock through his system. He resists the urge to close his eyes at the feeling, afraid she’ll disappear like his mom did if he does. “Your hair is longer than it was the last time I saw you,” she teases, eyes bright and playful.

“I’m so sorry,” he replies instantly, ready for this apology more than the one with his mom. “I fucked up and you paid for it, and you didn’t deserve that. You deserved better than that, better than me.” If he only gets this time with her, he needs for her to know he should have done more, _been_ more.

He watches her as she takes in his words, but never stops combing through his hair. “You know,” she says thoughtfully, as Bellamy focuses on the impossibility of being able to feel her. “You deserve so much better too.”

It’s enough of a jolt to bring his attention back to her face. Her eyes sparkle at whatever reaction shows across his.

“I obviously would pick a scenario where things ended differently, but you deserve a happy ending just as much as anyone else. So wake up, go home, save the heroics for someone else for a change, and _live_.”

Against his better judgment, Bellamy reflexively heaves a sigh, closing his eyes. He hesitates on opening them once they’re closed, recognizing the goodbye for what it was and knowing Gina will be gone, but also afraid to see who else he will see.

Instead, he finds himself gasping for a breath as his eyes fly open and he lets out a pained groan.

Six pairs of eyes with varying states of emotions stare back at him from around the room and he knows immediately that this, at least, is real.

Six people waiting around so they could yell at his stupidity.

It’s a toss-up for who will take the first lecture, but when Harper stands from where she was sitting against the wall, Bellamy will say it’s a surprise it’s not Raven or Monty first.

Harper moves to the side of his bed, glaring with all her might until her eyes glance at his much cleaner, much neater bandaged hand, and her expression breaks. “Next time you cut yourself,” she starts, any built-up anger dissipating the moment their eyes meet again, “take the damn medicine and don’t scare the hell out of us.”

The rest have similar sentiments, some more threatening in nature than others, until they leave him to rest and let his body fight off any lingering effects of the infection.

It’s then, and only then, that he allows himself to think about who _didn’t_ visit him in his feverish haze.

And for all he understands why his mom and Gina were there telling him to keep going, he just can’t get why Clarke wasn’t there too, yelling at him that he didn’t have a choice in the matter.

That she didn’t die just for him not to make it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy 2018 everyone :)  
> Here's to getting a trailer soon!


	22. 3 - I'm not jealous.

When Bellamy sees a finger coming towards his face out of the corner of his eye, he slowly looks up from the book he’s reading and leans his head away from Monty’s prodding finger.

“Uh,” Bellamy starts, leaning back further when the finger just keeps coming toward him to poke at his cheek. “Everything okay there?”

They’re _supposed_ to be planning out some final logistics on atmospheric impact per Raven’s orders – Bellamy reading up on any piece of nonfiction text they could scrounge up and Monty laying out a final equation to calculate the odds of their survival depending on how much the atmosphere rips them apart.

Either way, they’ve done as much as they could possibly do to prepare. Six years and five days, and whether they actually make it alive or not, they’re finally going home.

But Monty seems to think Bellamy’s face is more important than survival rate.

“When did you get so scruffy?” He questions, probing at Bellamy’s beard again as Bellamy gives up trying to avoid Monty’s prodding. “Like, when did you become this shaggy dude with hipster glasses? Was it a choice? Did you even know you had a beard?”

Bellamy deflects the interrogation with a roll of his eyes. “Don’t be jealous just because you can’t grow one,” he retorts, when truthfully, he absolutely has been so consumed with final preparations for their departure that he _may_ have forgotten to worry about things like physical appearance. “And what the hell are hipster glasses?” He asks, resisting the urge to reach up and adjust his glasses because of the reminder he’s wearing them.

“Excuse you, I’m not jealous,” Monty shoots back teasingly, falling back into his seat after poking Bellamy’s face once more. “I am a cultured person who recognizes that self-care still exists.” He shakes his head for emphasis, letting the short hair Harper had cut for him sway slightly. “Is this the point where you stop caring? We go home and you decide you want to look like a caveman to roleplay when we’re back on Earth?”

Bellamy snorts, trying to glare but also failing completely. Everyone’s been just a little bit giddy the past week or so, readying for their final countdown. The one that ends with them leaving in hours. And if Monty teasing him keeps the light mood that’s settled, Bellamy will take it happily.

They’re going fucking _home_.

Or they’re going to die trying.

“I think we should focus more on helping Raven get us through the atmosphere and less on my facial hair.”

“Not to mention your head of hair,” Monty adds even as he gets back to writing out the equation, smirking all the while. “Really, it’s just so much–”

Monty’s words come to a sudden halt when the entire room makes a sharp lurch, sending both of them off of their seats and all of their things on the table sailing to the ground. The lights above them flicker out for a moment before coming back on, with a dull siren beginning to echo through the halls as a red light Bellamy has never seen before blinks over and over in sync with the sound.

Not just a sound – a warning.

“You okay?” Bellamy calls as he stands up, stretching his hand to pull Monty up too.

Monty stands, and immediately focuses on that red light, mind racing behind his narrowed eyes. “That alarm is from the original Ark systems. Raven and I didn’t need anything from it, so we didn’t touch it. It was set up to warn of foreign carriers reaching the dock entrances.”

Bellamy watches the worry etch into Monty’s face. “Which means...,” he pushes, urgent.

Monty looks at him, face illuminating red with every round of the siren.

“Which means we have some unexpected company,” he says.

* * *

Bellamy’s unsurprised to find everyone racing into the control room, eyes questioning and confused and the slightest bit alarmed. But underneath it all, he also sees the fight in each and every one of them. Six years of calm, but they’re not going to go down easily.

If something’s looking for a fight, a fight is what they’ll get.

Raven’s rapidly limping from one screen to the next, typing almost angrily as she pulls up footage from surveillance cameras he didn’t even know were in working condition.

“What’s happening?” Emori asks, eyes scanning the video images that are popping up on more and more screens. Bellamy watches too, just as he sees movement on one of the halls that is far closer to where they are than he’s comfortable with.

“We disconnected the sensors that moderated objects in close proximity to the Ring, like rocks and shit, a few days ago so nothing picked it up until it triggered the original assault settings.”

“I’m sorry,” Harper interrupts, “ _assault_? What the hell is it?”

Bellamy’s eyes snap to a screen that shows the hall leading right to the control room, where there are _people_ with _guns_ moving in a formation Bellamy recognizes as a trained unit. “More like who the hell is it.”

There are actual, _living humans_ coming after them with weapons and the sudden change of events is so drastic Bellamy’s having a hard time accepting it.

“ _Baga_ ,” Echo spits, taking a defensive stance as they group together, just as the door bursts open and a spike of adrenaline Bellamy hasn’t felt in _years_ courses through his body.

Guns are instantly pointed at all seven of them, forcing them to remain still, all of them fighting against their own instincts to defend and attack.

“No one good,” Murphy mutters as he tries to subtly move closer to Emori, all of them moving in sync to cover one another as much as possible.

And Bellamy can’t really argue with Murphy. Not when three more people stride in behind the ones with guns, stances confident and arrogant like they’re in charge and the rest of them have no say in it.

Basically everything Echo’s already said confirmed by the confident smirks of those three strangers.

The enemy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dun dun DUN.


	23. 22 - That's irrational.

A man from that trio, older than the others, walks up until he’s standing in front of the seven of them, boots echoing with each step in the deafening silence that follows them storming in.

Bellamy watches as the man eyes each of them in turn, taking in their appearance, and Bellamy gets the distinct sense that he’s looking for something specific. The other man and woman do the same, eyeing them almost hungrily, the guy’s gaze fixating on Raven almost instantly.

It makes Bellamy wonder if it’s been just as long for them that they haven’t seen other humans, and whether their six years without conflict is going to catch up to them in a matter of minutes.

Taking a step in front of his friends, Bellamy draws all eyes to himself. “Quite the entrance to attack a group that’s unarmed,” he says neutrally, carelessly.

The older man, definitely the leader, smirks. “I wouldn’t call it an attack, more of a,” he pauses, seeming to thing over his phrasing, “precaution. We were hoping to find some living beings here, but whether they’d be welcoming or not was a gamble.”

“Then there’s no need to keep the guns up,” Bellamy replies, noting the soldier’s rigid stances, like they’re just waiting for some sort of surprise. “We have no weapons and we don’t want trouble.”

Bellamy tries not to be consumed with observing all of these new people, not when his senses are telling him there’s nothing good about them.

The leader seems to consider Bellamy’s words before nodding slightly, the guns lowering immediately. “My apologies,” he takes a final step towards Bellamy so that he’s standing in front of him and extends his hand. “My name is Paxton McCreary, leader of the Eligius ship.” When Bellamy just stares back purposefully, McCreary drops his hand and gestures to the other man and woman, who both smirk dangerously. “This is Charmaine and Vinson. We mean no harm to you and your crew.”

At that Murphy lets out an ill-timed snort, pulling the attention to him.

“Something funny?” The woman, Charmaine asks, challenges.

Murphy only smirks, unwavering in his show of arrogance. “I’d think you were more interested in taking what you want from us and killing us than becoming all buddy-buddy.”

Vinson, the one whose eyes still keep snagging on Raven in a way that sets Bellamy on edge, tilts his head at Murphy. “Now that’s irrational,” he drawls. “Not to mention messy,” he adds with a glint in his eyes.

“Then what do you want?” Bellamy asks, hoping to keep the attention off of his friends for as long as possible. He knows they’re sensing what he is – the threat, the danger.

“I’m hoping you can help us,” McCreary says, taking control as well again. “You see, we’re heading to that spotty green planet outside your ship, and I think you will be of great assistance to us when we get there.”

“And what makes you think that?” Raven speaks for the first time, aggression coloring every inch of her tone as she moves to stand in front of their friends too, right beside Bellamy.

McCreary smiles back confidently. “Call it intuition. There’s a ship docked outside that tells me you have similar intentions.”

“And if we say no?” Bellamy asks, already knowing the answer and trying to figure how to keep everyone the safest the longest.

“I’m afraid it’s nonnegotiable. Either you come willingly or you don’t, but I would suggest making this as easy as possible for yourselves. With so few of you, I would hate for you to make your numbers even smaller,” McCreary tacks on casually, with an almost amused lift of his brow.

And there it is – the true nature of what they want and what they’ll do to get it.

One wrong move and they’re as good as dead.

“It’s funny how you think it’s only us, don’t ya think?” Murphy shoots back, saying exactly what’s starting to nag at Bellamy. “What gives you the idea that it’s just us? That there’s no one else around?”

McCreary makes a show of scanning over them, almost like he’s counting them. He grins again like he’s in on a running joke, and Bellamy _knows_ they’re missing something. “Again,” he says, carrying an innocence to his tone, “intuition.”

Bellamy can feel the tensions rising from both sides – Charmain and Echo glaring at each other like that alone will kill the other, Vinson leering at Raven who stares back blankly even as she stands rigid next to Bellamy, the men and women with guns who seem to be waiting for any possible excuse to use them, McCreary standing there with the confidence that they’re playing right into his hands – and knows the calm is about to break. So he does what he thinks will keep them all alive – aware that’s now a short-term goal.

He reaches out his own hand to Paxton, who doesn’t hesitate to shake it. “Bellamy,” is all he says, a test and a peace-offering all in one.

And when he smiles like Bellamy gave him exactly what he wanted, like he already _knew_ , Bellamy knows this truce will last no more than a day.

Because the Eligius crew knows who Bellamy is, and he’s going to find out why.

* * *

That truce, remarkably, holds for all of a few hours.

Long enough for all of them to be herded from their living quarters for the past six years to the Eligius ship and for them to find out that they just entered onto a ship full of criminals far more dangerous than a group of underage delinquents waiting to be floated.

It doesn’t take much for Monty to befriend another member of the crew, a cocky kid named Zeke who reminds Bellamy a little too much of Jasper, who tells them about the nature of the ship, their past, the mining colonies, and the crew’s recent awakening from hypersleep.

How Paxton "Graveyard" McCreary is as close to a crime lord as they’ll ever meet and Charmaine is the one responsible for every one looking like they have military training with guns and Vinson is a literal-fucking-serial killer.

How Zeke knows _something_ else, but is unwilling to share more than the basic facts.

It’s – a lot.

And if that isn’t enough to set off every single possible warning sign in Bellamy’s brain, the moment Paxton pulls Bellamy and Raven to the side and tells them to tell him about Earth, Bellamy and Raven share a look.

Not a single one of them mentioned anything about ever having been there.


	24. 85 - It's not what it looks like.

Everyone’s on edge the second they start to try and separate them.

It starts with McCreary pulling Bellamy and Raven away from the rest, and when they try to force the others to leave the room, they all coerce and persuade and eventually fight until they’re all locked up in neighboring cells with some bruises on all of them and burning determination fueling them as they feel the ship release from the Ring to head to Earth.

“Well that went well,” Murphy notes dryly the minute they’re left along in their cells, prompting eye rolls from practically everyone.

Bellamy moves to pinch his nose, realizing immediately his glasses are gone, a casualty of their fight.

“What did you expect from a bunch of psychopaths who know way too much about us?” Raven asks from where she’s sitting on the ground, her bad leg stretched out straight in front of her.

And that’s still the question none of them has the answer to. “Do you think they picked up a frequency from the bunker?” Harper asks, following Raven’s lead and settling down onto the ground.

He had considered that too. Maybe the bunker had been trying to get in touch with them and the Eligius crew woke up and heard Octavia reaching out, telling them they survived.

But before Bellamy could even dare to mention such kind of hope, footsteps echo off the hard metal ground, increasing in sound the closer they get to them.

Bellamy’s immediately on the defensive, afraid that it’ll be Charmaine coming to inflict some kind of torture or Vinson coming to do something even worse.

Instead, they hear laughter.

“Man,” they hear someone call from the entrance to the cells, just before Zeke appears with a sparkle in his eye and a skip to his step, “you guys are _wild_.”

Monty and Bellamy’s cells are adjacent, so when Zeke moves toward where Monty stands, Bellamy moves too so they’re as close as they can be with the bars in between them.

“I mean really,” he carries on, everyone else staring at him from their sitting or standing stances in their own cells, but listening keenly nonetheless, “I never would have thought the chicks would be the ones kicking more ass than the dudes, but _man_ , you guys put on more entertainment in the past hour than I’ve seen in the past hundred years.”

And while over-the-top is certainly one way Bellamy’s quickly identifying with Zeke from every interaction they’ve had, he can also see the true, genuine excitement too, again reminding him far too much of Jasper.

“Says the one who just woke from a cryogenic sleep,” Raven responds sarcastically from across the room, looking extremely unimpressed.

 Zeke takes it in stride, smiling sharply, “well there wasn’t much action then, now was there?” He shoots back.

He glances back from where he came, surely looking for anyone to be listening in on their conversation. And then, when it seems the coast is clear, Zeke’s entire demeanor shifts, having everyone leaning in from where they are. “We’re heading to the green branching out from what was the United States, should be there within a couple days.”

He hesitates.

“McCreary wants to monitor and see if our scanners can pick anything up before we land.”

And that hesitation, more than anything else Zeke could say, peaks Bellamy’s interest.

 _Octavia_ , Bellamy thinks again, more confidently.

“How did you know where we were from?” Harper questions, suspicion dripping from her tone. McCreary confirmed as much when he tried to ask Bellamy and Raven.

Zeke rolls his eyes. “That’s definitely not your biggest issue right now,” he deflects, but also doesn’t deny.

“So what is?” Monty asks, pulling Bellamy back to the issue at hand – they’re prisoners in apparent enemy territory. “If our biggest issue isn’t that a group of strangers seems to know everything about us, what _is_?”

“Escape would be my top priority if I was being held captive,” Zeke offers, more serious than joking.

“And then?” Monty pushes again, as aggressive as Bellamy’s ever seen him in the face of his friends being threatened. “We have nothing to defend ourselves with, what do you expect us to do against people who can pick us off in an instant?”

Zeke’s face shutters, and in a somber tone so at odds with what they’ve seen of him so far, he stares straight at Bellamy. “You get the fuck away. You run and don’t look back, ‘cause the moment they realize you’re not going to give them shit, you’re dead.”

Zeke reaches his hand into Bellamy’s cell, but Bellamy doesn’t look down at whatever’s being offered, instead holding Zeke’s gaze.

Smirking almost helplessly, Zeke shrugs his shoulder. “I get you guys have no reason to trust me, but I’m not looking for anyone to die. I signed up for adventure, not murder.”

“From what little you’ve said, it doesn’t sound like you _signed up_ at all,” Raven points out.

Zeke just shrugs again, not breaking eye contact with Bellamy. “Not everyone’s as bad as you think. Some of us aren’t the hard-core criminals you think we are. I’d say we’re more like,” he pauses deliberately with that sparkle returning to his eyes, “delinquents.”

The word pulls Bellamy up short.

“It’s not what it looks like, okay?” Zeke promises. “Trust me, one delinquent to another.”

That word again, almost like a message.

He stares at Zeke, answers Bellamy can’t understand flitting across his eyes. Those eyes glance down to his still offered hand. Bellamy looks down to find his glasses, miraculously still in one piece.

As weird a peace offering as it may be, Bellamy understands it for what it is.

They need help if all seven of them are going to make it out alive. And if their choices are the crime lord, the militarist, the serial killer, or the adrenaline junkie?

Bellamy takes his glasses from the adrenaline junkie.

He may not be telling them everything, but right now, Zeke’s the closest thing they have to an ally.


	25. 70 - What are you afraid of?

They count four days until a small mob of soldiers follows McCreary and Charmaine in, opening all of the cells and hauling everyone to their feet to bind their hands together.

Four days of them being precariously balanced between being safe behind the bars and being locked up in a ship full of psychopaths.

“What’s going on?” Bellamy demands, fighting against the people shoving him out of his cell. He glances around as all of his friends receive similar treatment.

Instead of responding, Paxton tilts his head in a signal the crew must have been waiting for, because then Bellamy’s being moved from the room swiftly and efficiently with Monty and Raven being pushed right behind him. He shoves back against the arms pushing him forward, trying to turn his head to make sure the others are coming too.

When he sees that while Echo looks ready to murder and Harper, Murphy, and Emori are jostling and elbowing just as much as he is, they’re coming all the same.

He finds he’s more concerned with the fact that Vinson has weaseled his way to be the one herding Raven along with Zeke nowhere in sight.

They suddenly stop when they make it to a large door, metal creaking as it pops open and moves to lay out in front of them, actual _wind_ rushing in. And in any other situation, Bellamy would probably cry from the sensation.

“Well,” McCreary finally says, cocking a gun that is handed to him as Charmaine stands next to him and does the same. They’re readying for something, and Bellamy thinks they’re about to find out what. “I’d say welcome home, but my guess is things look a little different than the last time you were here,” he says almost mockingly, gleam in his eye.

And then he and Charmaine are holding their guns out ready to fire and walking down the ramp cautiously.

“Is it me,” Monty mutters from right behind him, “or are they acting like they’re expecting someone to shoot back.”

Bellamy’s mind immediately goes to the bunker again, wondering if Octavia, Miller, and Kane are out there watching and waiting to see if they need to attack or not.

A few seconds of stillness, everyone watching McCreary and Charmaine venture further out, and nothing happens.

If someone _is_ out there watching, they don’t show themselves as the crew gets the go-ahead to move forward.

It’s sensory overload the second they’re out in the open.

He feels the kiss of the wind on his skin and squints at the brightness of the sun and inhales deeply at the smell of the trees like he’s dreamt of for _years_. And he sees nothing but barren dirt laid out in front of them, right on the edge of those green trees he smells almost as acutely as he can hear Vinson prodding Raven along with ridicule to rile her up as they move forward.

Bellamy knows Raven’s leg is stiff from being in the cells, knows that the walk is forcing her limp more than normal, knows Vinson will pounce on it before Bellamy can even turn his head.

“Need a hand?” He hears Vinson say in a tone so at odds with his words as he moves to grip her waist, and Bellamy’s blood runs cold at the sight. Raven merely snorts in response, shoving him off as Vinson resorts to shoving her along again. “Come on Raven, what are you afraid of?” He taunts, even as Bellamy sees him push Raven again, each time more forceful and aggressive than the last.

And Bellamy sees the fixation, the obsession, dancing dangerously in his eyes.

He turns to watch Raven right herself, walking with a pride only Raven could. Bellamy tries to slow his own pace down the ramp, hoping to get himself and Monty closer to her. He turns again, they’re eyes meeting and Bellamy seeing absolute _fury_ blazing in hers.

They’re gazes hold for a moment, telling him to be ready for whatever comes next, and then she turns slowly toward Vinson, insuring she has his full attention. “I’m not _afraid_ of anything. But you? How long will it take for your crew to realize keeping a serial killer around isn’t the smartest of tactics?”

Vinson’s face hardens from mocking to cruel instantly as he pushes Raven too hard, forcing her to crash to the ground with a grunt of pain. But she still looks up at Vinson triumphantly. “You seem to be the only one here who’s afraid of anything,” she drawls sweetly, looking fierce even as she tries to get her legs under her.

Monty moves to help her, guards are huddling in to pull Monty away, and Vinson looks just about ready to start kicking Raven as she tries to get her bearings, springing Bellamy into action as he knocks Vinson down before he so much as thinks about making contact and guards swarm around them.

It’s a blur of adrenaline as Bellamy focuses in on beating his bound hands into Vinson’s face for every sickening leer and comment and push and smirk he’s directed at Raven since they were taken.

He hopes that the others take advantage of the madness for what it is – a distraction. He wants them to do what Zeke said and _run_ , hopes they know he would want them to leave him. Even if Raven and Monty can’t, if Murphy and the girls get away, it’ll be worth it.

But then a gunshot is ringing out, freezing Bellamy on top of Vinson with the absolute horror that they _did_ run, and someone paid for it.

Vinson takes the opportunity to shove Bellamy off, landing in a punch to his face as Bellamy tries to search for his friends, only to see the mob of soldiers clearing and McCreary aiming his rifle to the sky.

“Now Bellamy,” he says, tone soft like he’s speaking to a child, “I wanted to give you and your friends a chance to get some fresh air, and you ruined it.”

And then, that rifle towards the sky finds a new target, facing right at Bellamy.

Bellamy scans the crowd of people, sees Raven back on her feet, Monty holding her up, the others just behind them with guns to their heads.

“I’ve tried to be nice,” he carries on, “but you have been of no help and now you’re proving to be more trouble than you’re worth.”

With that, he takes a predatory step toward Bellamy, his intent clear as his gun doesn’t waver from Bellamy’s chest. “So I need to set an example for what happens when people don’t help me,” he explains, Bellamy not being able to help noting his speech is the truest testament to his crime days.

Paxton "Graveyard" McCreary’s going to kill him.

He’s going to shoot him right here, teaching everyone a “lesson.”

Taking one last glance at the terror in his friends’ eyes, Bellamy stands from where Vinson had knocked him over, head held high as he stands toe to toe with McCreary, the only thing between them the gun.

Paxton takes it for the challenge it is. “Any last words?”

And yeah, the guy was definitely in the mafia at some point in his life.

But Bellamy opens his mouth to speak anyways. If he’s going to die, he wants his friends to know they’re worth it. He understands how Clarke felt all those years ago – that if he has to die for them to live, he’ll do it willingly.

So he opens his mouth to tell them, and immediately sees the glint in McCreary’s eyes telling Bellamy he was never going to get the chance to say a damn thing.

The shot rings out a second later, and Bellamy tenses as he waits for excruciating pain to set in.

When it doesn’t, he looks down at his chest and finds his shirt is as clean as it ever was – no blood in sight.

He hears a gasp from in front of him and looks up just in time to see McCreary’s look of confusion as the gun he holds shows no signs of having made a shot. Bellamy’s attention falls to McCreary’s chest just as a deep red starts to bloom in the front of his shirt, blood spreading rapidly right before he collapses to the ground.

And after that, well, it’s pure chaos.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're going to be jumping over to see what's going on behind those bushes where Madi and Clarke are hiding....


	26. 95 - Just wait a second.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a heads up, I've got a bit of a lengthy author's note at the end :)

“Oh my god, did I shoot him?”

Clarke’s ears buzz as her brain tries to catch up with the events of the last thirty seconds – the literal sight of Bellamy and the others making her practically euphoric, the first gunshot ringing out and making her heart plummet, the man then aiming his gun right at Bellamy making Clarke feel numb with inaction, the second gunshot coming from their hiding place and forcing confusion to fight through all of her other muddled emotions.

Because the gunshot came from behind the bushes, but it didn’t come from Clarke’s gun.

“Clarke?” Madi asks again panicked, too shaken up to pop her head out from the bushes. “Did I shoot Bellamy?”

At that, Clarke whips her head to see the horror written across Madi’s features. “I didn’t want to hit him,” she whispers urgently as they start to hear the chaos unraveling near the ship, “but they were going to _kill_ him. I had to do something.”

So Madi did what Clarke couldn’t get her own body to do – she shot the enemy, gambled her lack of aim to take the chance and save Bellamy.

The thought of Bellamy getting the bullet instead of the intended target has Clarke bolting up as high as she’s willing to chance while remaining hidden to see _who_ exactly Madi shot. She hopes with every semblance of her being that she won’t find Bellamy sprawled across the ramp bleeding out, because she doesn’t think her heart would be able to survive it.

Not like this, not when they’re _this close._

But when she peeks out above the bush as high as she’ll venture, all she sees is people scrambling everywhere, too many people shouting for Clarke to even try to pick up what’s being said. She tries to scan the people shuffling in and out of the mob, looking for any of the faces that she’s drawn hundreds of thousands of times. She directs her attention to their feet, searching for a body laid out on the ground and finding one who’s dressed like the man trying to kill Bellamy was.

“ _Clarke_ ,” Madi demands in a tone she’s never heard, pulling Clarke’s attention back to her as Madi still refuses to look above the bush. “Is Bellamy alright?”

And that snags on Clarke’s thoughts too, because –

“How did you know that was Bellamy?” Clarke questions, because even _she_ didn’t recognize him at first, and Madi’s only ever seen drawings of him looking much different than his current state.

“You said his name,” Madi tells her, leaning up from where she had ducked down. “When that man shot the gun up to the sky you called his name.” And Clarke would deny it solely because she has no recollection of it, but she knows she’s hardly in control of herself right now. She heard a bullet and saw white with the terror and dread she felt.

She wants to run over there and drag them away from anyone who even _thinks_ about hurting them.

As Madi moves to take her first glance of the mess unraveling ahead of them, scattered shots ring out aimed towards the green woods, right above where they’re concealed.

Clarke pounces to cover Madi instantly.

Apparently whoever these people holding their friends hostage are, they’re smart enough to know any shooter would be hiding out in the green, whether they have someone actually telling them to shoot there or not.

Clarke looks down at Madi, whose eyes are squeezed shut as she holds onto Clarke tightly.

More shouting echoes to where they are, and the shooting halts as both of them loose tight breaths. Clarke’s body is thrumming with the adrenaline racing through her, fear spiking all of her senses into overdrive as she grips Madi’s shaking body close.

“It’s okay,” Clarke whispers into Madi’s hair in the silence that follows the cease in shots. “You got the bad guy, you didn’t get Bellamy,” she assures her as much as herself.

When no shots follow the silence, Clarke tucks Madi under her arm while she dares to stick her head up far enough to see what’s happening, and what she sees makes her stomach twist up more than she thought was possible.

Because they’re going away.

She watches as the organized group of people they watched exit the ship moves as a massive cluster back _into_ the ship, and _that_ finally kicks her into action.

Their friends are somewhere in that mob of people, and she is _not_ losing them to be locked up in another metal ship.

So Clarke lets go of Madi and moves to her feet, careful to stay hunched over so that she’s still mostly covered. The more she watches the people move back into their own shelter though, the more confident she feels that nobody is looking for an attacker from the green anymore.

Something’s going on, and she needs to act fast before they’re gone.

She looks down at where Madi is still huddled, calmer now that there’s no bullets flying towards them, but still a child who should never have to worry about someone shooting at her. “Madi,” Clarke says softly, but directly, “go to the Rover and take it back to camp. Hide there and keep at least two guns on you ready to shoot.”

Madi looks up at her, equal parts suspicion and fear. “What? No!”

“ _Please_ ,” Clarke begs. “I can’t leave them in there, and I can’t take you with me.” She feels her heart starting to rip itself in two, not wanting to leave Madi alone but not able to leave Bellamy and the others behind.

Madi sits up at that, clearly feeling more comfortable exposing herself from behind the bush the longer no shouts or shots begin again. “Just wait a second,” she says, “you want me to leave so that _I’m_ safe and you want to get go get our friends so that _their_ safe, but who’s going to keep _you_ safe?”

Clarke opens her mouth to respond, but finds she doesn’t know what to say.

But she needs to know Madi is somewhere safe, so that’s what she tells her.

Madi seems to take it in for second, but then she responds, “I’m safest with you,” like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “We protect each other,” she reminds Clarke as if she’s forgotten, right before standing all the way up so that there’s no way she can hide. And if there was any question of whether or not anyone was paying attention in their direction, there’s their answer as Clarke stands to her full height too. She watches as the group herding into the ship gets smaller and smaller.

It’s like Madi’s entire mindset shifts with the stubborn determination only someone her age could have in refusing to do as she’s told. “Now let’s go get our friends.”

Clarke knows arguing with Madi will only waste more time, but still, she hesitates. If anything were to happen to Madi, Clarke couldn’t survive that either.

But she also knows Madi. And if she says she’s going, she’ll either go with Clarke, or she’ll sneak along like she did when she followed Clarke to the bushes. So she fights down every instinct in her that’s screaming at her to not let her child head toward danger, resigning herself to call on that hope for one last herculean miracle.

“You stay behind me and shoot anyone who even looks like they might want to hurt you.”

“Got it,” Madi nods, readying her rifle to take a shot if necessary.

Clarke thinks of Bellamy. Of Raven and Monty and Harper and Murphy and Emori and Echo.

They’re _right there_.

And that same determination she’s seeing in Madi settles in herself too.

They make their move.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp.
> 
> In a turn of events I think was unexpected by all, the premiere date for S5 is much later than we had hoped. Since this is a hiatus project, I do plan to continue until the premiere with a chapter a week. I added to my chapter count so that by April 24, this fic should consist of 48 ficlets, 12 more than originally planned (yikes). It throws a wrench into some of my planning, but I'll make it work. I sure am enjoying writing these and I hope you enjoy reading them just as much. Hopefully they help with the long wait we have until a trailer.... and then the actual premiere..
> 
> Also, as a heads up, the next few ficlets will be jumping back and forth between POVs since events are starting to happen simultaneously. Just think guys, the actual Bellarke reunion may be a far ways off, but mine is just around the corner ;)


	27. 41 - Have you lost your fucking mind?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little side note: Apparently they changed Robert McCreary's name to Paxton McCreary? So I went back into the past few chapters and changed that, and will be using that name moving forward.

As Paxton’s body hits the ramp, the thud that sounds out is the only thing Bellamy hears for all of a second.

Then, that seemingly well-trained crew Charmaine had been leading falls to utter shambles as people scream over each other, shouting orders and shooting wildly without the guidance of their leader telling them what to do. And there’s a thousand different things that should be going through his mind, but all Bellamy can think is – _this is it_. If they’re going to get away, it has to be now.

“Bellamy!”

At his name echoing out above the chaos, Bellamy searches for the source to find his friends ducking to the side of the ramp, trying to avoid stray bullets. Bellamy dares to breathe a sigh of relief at seeing them no longer being held at gunpoint by any of Charmaine’s soldiers.

Through the racket of shots being fired and the commotion of Charmaine trying to rally control of her troops near Paxton’s body, Bellamy hears his friends shouting his name over and over again, calling for him to hurry, knowing that the longer they waited, the less of a chance they had of getting away.

He runs and ducks and dives until he’s being pulled in by whoever can get their hands on him first, hugging him fiercely before passing him to whoever’s next, someone unbinding his hands so that he can move them freely, and it’s then that he realizes that he should be dead. That that should be him on the ground bleeding out instead of McCreary, and the fact that he’s not has everything to do with someone outside of this ship.

There’s still a ringing in his ears from the adrenaline and he can hardly hear what his friends are saying to him over the prisoners’ shouts, so he turns to look to Raven to explain that they need to leave _now_ – only to not find her anywhere in sight.

It’s then that he grasps what Harper is literally screaming at him, her hands in his shirt shaking his entire body.

“He took her!” She cries, eyes manic even as she shakes the sense into Bellamy, pointing toward the entrance of the ship. “That fucking psychopath ripped her away from Monty! We have to get her!”

And it’s like Bellamy’s brain is clearing of fog as he finally _gets it_.

Vinson took Raven.

“Okay,” Bellamy rasps, reaching out to stop Harper from shaking him while trying to think about what to logically do next when there isn’t any logic to it – leaving Raven isn’t an option, but they also need to leave now if they want to get away.

Harper’s movements stop, her grip loosening in his shirt as he gets a second to think.

Of course he wants to run in right now and get Raven back. He _wants_ to kill Vinson on the spot.

But he also wants the friends he has control of saving to get the hell out of here before they’re all trapped back in that ship.

It’s too much to think about, with no right answer in sight. And he’s so consumed with what the fuck to do that when he goes to shout orders to the others, he realizes there’s no need to yell at all because there’s no more shouting, no more shooting, going on around them.

“Hold your fire,” he hears a voice call out, as if not for the first time, but with a command that is clearly being followed.

Bellamy watches as the soldiers hold position, aiming their guns at an enraged Charmaine and the small group of soldiers she had rallied.

For a moment, everything is still as the soldiers slowly shift to make a path for whoever it is calling the shots.

“What the fuck is he doing?” Monty whispers, as the owner to that voice makes himself known.

As Zeke stands confidently in command, smile sharp and eyes trained solely on Charmaine.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Charmaine snarls, echoing Monty’s sentiments even as her eyes skip around from place to place to see _her_ soldiers waiting for the command of someone who’s not her.

“It’s time this ship has some proper order to it. A place with a little less deranged leadership,” Zeke explains calmly, carrying himself with an authority Bellamy has yet to see.

At that, Charmaine laughs, borderline hysterical. “So what, this is a coup? Have you lost your fucking mind?” She barks out.

Everyone around them holds their breath as Zeke takes another step toward her so that they’re standing toe-to-toe. “That’s exactly what this is. The delinquents are taking over,” he tells her, and while Bellamy can’t see the look on his face, the threat in his tone is clear, even as Bellamy can still hear a hint of that wildness Zeke constantly carries with him.

And as Zeke turns to address the giant group as a whole, Bellamy can see that playful glint still dancing in his eyes. “Take our former general and her followers to lock up, bring the body to the medical unit. Everyone else, I think it’s time to have a chat about what’s been kept from us by our supposed leaders. Meet me in the mess hall and I promise you I will explain everything our leaders have chosen not to.”

Whispers follow Zeke’s orders, confused looks being traded all around, but they follow him as he walks back up the ramp of the ship.

His eyes catch on Bellamy as he walks past him, and Bellamy tenses, waiting for another order to be called out to take them to lock up too.

But instead, all Zeke does his send him a wink of the eye as he smirks at him and his friends.

“As your ally,” he calls out to them as he walks by, “I’d suggest checking out those woods. I think you’ll like what you find.”

Bellamy looks to his friends, his thoughts mirrored in all of their faces.

Raven.

“Get to the green,” he tells them, still not sure how much he truly trusts Zeke, not willing to gamble them staying here and regretting it later. “I’ll get her. I swear.”

Echo looks ready to argue, Harper is already shaking her head in protest, and he knows it makes sense to bring someone with him.

But he also doesn’t care. He’s not willing to risk any more of his friends’ lives when they’re so close to being safe, free.

So instead, Bellamy does something he hasn’t done in a while – years, even.

He ignores his thoughts in favor of his instincts, barreling through the crowd of people heading back into the ship.

He enters back into their prison, listening as his friends’ disapproving shouts become more and more distant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all!
> 
> Sorry for the long gap of time between updates! And thank you to everyone who has been reaching out and asking about the story. Updates will be coming more frequently in the hopes that I'll be back on track in a few weeks! Fingers crossed!!


	28. 73 - You don't have to stay.

They get to the foot of the ramp in record time without anyone spotting them.

“Madi, stay behind me,” Clarke tells her for at least the tenth time as she takes her first step onto the metal grates. They’re _so close_.

She takes another few steps before turning around when Madi doesn’t respond, only to find her glaring at the edge of metal digging into the ground, her feet still solidly on the dirt.

Clarke backtracks so she’s in front of Madi, whose stare remains solidly on the foreign metal. “Hey,” she says softly, reaching out gently to tilt Madi’s gaze towards her, “you can stay in the Rover. I’d feel much better if you _did_ stay there.”

Their eyes lock, and Clarke finds exactly what she expected in her daughter’s – pure stubbornness.

Madi shakes Clarke’s hand away, resolute as she steps onto the ramp with a deep breath. “Just like in the stories,” she mutters, more to herself than to Clarke.

But Clarke finishes her train of thought anyways, taking a moment to grip her hand in comfort. “We fight the monsters, we save our friends.”

“We fight the monsters and save our friends,” Madi agrees, squeezing Clarke’s hand before letting go. “I’ll stay behind you, I promise.”

Clarke nods her head once before directing her attention up the ramp, moving forward as quickly as she’ll dare as she continues to watch the heads of the people who had been shooting at them bob together as they move slowly back into their ship.

She feels Madi’s presence close on her back, reassuring her that Madi’s right behind her.

And as they move forward, as Clarke keeps an eye on the shuffle of people, she realizes there’s a break in the crowd, a small group of people moving in the opposite direction. A group moving _away_ from the ship, heading down the ramp and straight towards her and Madi.

“Clarke,” Madi says warily, seeing exactly what Clarke does. Clarke also sees the end of Madi’s rifle point towards that group from the corner of her eye.

And she’s about to do the same, until that group gets just that bit closer, where she can pick up on the details of them.

Details that she knows almost better than she knows Madi’s or her own, even if they’re a little bit different than what she remembers.

She watches her friends, her _family_ , move to protect one another from the strangers at the bottom of the ramp aiming rifles at them.

She watches her family move to protect themselves from _her_.

“Madi, put the rifle down,” Clarke tells hers quietly, just as she moves to put her hands up to show she means no harm.

They stop a little ways ahead of her and Madi, eyeing them cautiously.

No one moves for a moment, no one says a thing.

Clarke watches as one by one, her friends focus directly on her, squinting as if that will help them see something different than what they already are.

She can’t help but count them – five instead of seven, Bellamy and Raven missing – and her heart does the strangest thing of bursting with joy while also clenching with despair.

And while she’s trying to get a control on her own confusion at the missing pieces to the group, Monty takes it upon himself to step in front of the others, blinking over and over like he’s waiting for his vision to clear.

“Clarke?” He calls, cautious hope bleeding into her name. “Is that you?”

She probably looks just that bit different to them as they do to her.

She takes a breath, takes a step forward.

“Hey, Monty,” Clarke says, voice shaking with every syllable, everything feeling surreal. “Yeah, it’s– um, it’s me.”

“Holy _fuck_ ,” Murphy curses further back, right before marching straight past Monty to gather her up in his arms.

Clarke lets out a gasp of a laugh, wet and overwhelming in all of the best ways as Harper and Monty come closer too with _oh my god_ ’s and _how are you alive_ ’s and it’s complete sensory overload as they tug her into their own tight hugs.

Emori and Echo look just as shocked, coming up to give her shorter, looser hugs, but still sharing sentiments of surprise and joy at seeing her alive and well.

She takes a moment to look them all over – a little worn, a little older, but still everything she has imagined for years, minus two key people.

_Did the night blood work?_

_Was that you who shot McCreary?_

_Are there more of you?_

_Where are the people from the bunker?_

They bombard her with questions, ones that Clarke can’t answer right now because Bellamy and Raven are _still_ nowhere in sight.

“Monty,” Clarke says, focusing on him over the slew of questions. “ _Monty_. Bellamy and Raven, where are they?”

Harper’s eyes widen at their names, guilt and worry washing over her face. “They’re still inside. The ship is full of criminals, and one of them took Raven,” she explains. “Bellamy told us to run and he went after her. He left before we could follow him.”

Of course he did.

Her heart plummets, any brief joy she feels at the reunion short-lived.

“Okay,” she says, stepping away from them, voice sounding far steadier than she feels as she takes control like she hasn’t in so long. “You guys go, you don’t have to stay here. If you get to the trees you should be safe. I’ll go help them, Madi will show you where our Rover is and you can hide out until–”

“Who’s Madi?” Harper interrupts, breaking Clarke’s list of commands with a jolt.

In all the excitement of reuniting, Clarke forgot Madi was still behind her.

“My daughter,” she says, turning with a smile to introduce her, “Madi this is–”

But Madi isn’t there.

“Madi?” Clarke says again, panic lacing the edges of the name as she whips her head around, trying to see where she went. The others look around too, more confused than anything. “ _Madi_!” She shouts, this time dread creeping into her bones at the fact that Madi’s nowhere in sight.

“Clarke, what–”

“There was a girl with me,” Clarke cuts in, knowing she’s sounding more and more distressed. “She was right behind me, did you see her?”

“Of course we did,” Monty reasons, reminding Clarke of how calm he always was in a crisis. “But then we saw _you_ and our attention kind of shifted.”

And gave Madi the chance to keep going.

They didn’t have time to waste with reunions and happiness, not when she knew Bellamy and Raven needed their help.

So she did what they set out to do.

She went to fight the monsters who had them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of many reunions on the horizon :)


	29. 2 - I swear it won't happen again.

With every second that passes, Bellamy’s heartrate ticks higher and higher thinking about what could happen to Raven before he gets to her.

They already knew Vinson was a serial killer, but the more Bellamy saw of him when they were imprisoned – the lingering looks, the fixated stares – the clearer it was who his victims most likely were: women.

And Raven’s as strong as they come.

So he pushes, and shoves, and ignores the disgruntled protests of the miners all around him as he tries to figure out where the hell is the most rational place to go find a psychopath who has no sense to him.

Someplace solitary is his first bet. Someplace Raven’s familiar with is his second, as if there were many of those to begin with.

And it hits him.

Bellamy breaks from the group herding back into the ship as soon as it clicks, sprinting as fast as he can towards the holding cells they were being held in before landing.

And as soon as he hears the murmur of voices from outside the cells, Bellamy is hit with a combination of overwhelming relief that Raven’s voice is one of those echoing through the doorway and utter panic at the words spilling from Vinson’s mouth.

“I was going to be nice to you after our little run-in outside, but– you were just going to _run_. You and your little friends were going to leave without a second glance back,” Vinson rambles, voice crazed as Bellamy peers around the doorway to find him pacing rapidly in front of Raven, who watches Vinson’s every movement carefully.

Bellamy moves more fully into the entrance to catch Raven’s eye, her eyes flitting to him briefly before tracking Vinson’s motions again. Bellamy catches the slight shake of her head in warning just as Vinson moves to stand in front of her, his back to Bellamy.

“We were going to have _fun_ first, Raven. We’d just started the game, but now,” he laughs, his hand moving out of Bellamy’s line of vision, “now, we have to skip right to playing.”

And when Vinson’s hand comes back into sight again, it’s with the sharp blade of a knife waving dangerously in between the psycho and Raven.

Bellamy doesn’t hesitate a second longer, stepping into the room, hoping against all hope that he’ll be enough of a distraction to get Raven away. “I’m down for that,” he calls, his voice enough to make Vinson turn, his face already bruising from Bellamy’s bound fists earlier. “But,” Bellamy adds, his movements slow, eyes tracking the motions of the knife as he makes his way towards the opposite end from where Raven is, “I get to go first.”

If Vinson’s in any way surprised, he doesn’t show it. Instead, he looks almost gleeful as he takes a step closer to Raven. Too close for Bellamy to get to her first. “I’ve got to hand it to you Blake,” he calls, stilling his movements and looking directly at him, “you’re a smooth talker when you need to be. But the only one I’m interested in here is your pretty partner.”

“Who is not interested,” Raven spits out viciously.

Vinson smirks back. “Well those are the best kind,” he tells her, wielding the knife in front of him again.

Before he can bring that knife any closer to Raven, Bellamy lunges at him, hoping to barrel him over like he did outside on the ramp and give Raven a chance to run.

Instead, Bellamy’s met with the knife swinging at him as Raven gasps his name out sharply.

He turns to the side at the last second, but he still feels the hot sting of the blade hitting his skin. Vinson deftly avoids Bellamy, moving so that he’s closer to where Bellamy came in and forcing Raven and Bellamy to move closer together into the room.

“Ah, ah, ah,” Vinson scolds, shaking the knife at them like he’s chastising them. “You got the best of me on that move once already. I swear,” he promises dangerously, “it won’t happen again.”

Bellamy glances to Raven to see her eyeing his arm worriedly.

He reaches up to his arm where the knife got him, feeling the stickiness of blood seep into his shirt and drench his hand. It’s enough of a gash for the blood to flow freely.

As they watch Vinson wipe Bellamy’s blood off of the knife in the most calculated of ways, like he’s done this _far too much_ , Raven moves closer to Bellamy so that they’re standing side by side. He feels her tension matching his, not knowing what the hell to do.

They’re trapped in a room with a knife-wielding maniac, no weapons for them to use.

“Now,” Vinson says, knowing he has their complete attention as he stands at the entrance of their only way out, “if you don’t mind Blake, Raven and I were just beginning to play.”

Bellamy removes his hand from his wound, taking a step in front of Raven. “And I already told you. Me first.”

There’s a beat of silence, tension thick as can be in the room as Vinson eyes them hungrily, until the click of a gun echoes from behind him.

“Let them go, or I’ll shoot,” a small voice demands from behind Vinson, whose grin turns wicked as he turns to address whoever’s threatening him.

It’s not a small voice, but a _young_ voice.

Bellamy can’t help but gape as a girl is revealed to him and Raven. A _grounder girl_ , if how she’s dressed is anything to go by.

But while Raven’s reaction mirrors Bellamy’s, Bellamy notes that Vinson doesn’t seemed surprised in the least by the appearance of this girl.

“Miss Madi,” he croons, “I was hoping I’d get to meet you.”

By the startled look on the girl’s face, on _Madi_ ’s face, the fact that Vinson knows of her is news to her.

All Bellamy knows is that he feels any last defense in him that wasn’t already up spring awake at the predatory look he gives to this girl. That he knows exactly what that look means because he’s seen it enough times directed towards Raven.

He can’t even spare a thought to the fact that she’s a grounder and what that could possibly mean, not when Vinson moves suddenly and uses whatever military training he has to disarm her almost instantly, tossing her rifle into one of the empty cells, far from their access.

She squeaks in surprise as Vinson grabs her and drags her into the room.

Bellamy moves forward on instinct, reaching his hands out in some form of surrender, of calm, to protect the girl somehow as Raven grabs at him to keep him from getting any closer.

But Bellamy’s sole focus is on the girl, whose eyes are wide and terrified as Vinson places his blade on the skin of her neck.

“I’ve got a better idea,” he tells them, looking exactly like someone who has everything he wants in the world. “How about _she_ goes first.”


	30. 62 - It's okay to cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who's been reading and to those who have been leaving such encouraging comments!
> 
> Now here's some Mama Bear Clarke....

“Dammit,” Clarke curses, feeling her world start to shatter around the edges. “God fucking _dammit_!”

Her vision tunnels as she looks up the ramp at the receding crowd of people going into the ship. Madi went right in, didn’t hesitate or wait.

Clarke gasps in a breath, but she doesn’t feel the relief of oxygen in her lungs. Instead, she feels herself taking shorter and shorter breaths as her mind races with all the dangers Madi just threw herself into. She feels dizzy with the thoughts, vision clouding with sheer terror.

“ _Clarke_!” Emori shouts, giving her a shake for good measure. “You need to calm down. We’ll come and help,” she reasons, shocking Clarke out of her rising panic.

“Do you have any weapons?” She hears herself asking them.

At that, Emori’s face falls. “No, they took anything we had.”

“But we can get to the woods on our own,” Echo says, speaking up for the first time, not seeming happy with the plan in the least but knowing they’d be of no help without something to defend themselves. “Go get your daughter, Clarke,” she orders, placing her hand reassuringly on Clarke’s arm.

Clarke’s focus snaps into place at her words, knowing she’s right. Madi doesn’t need her to lose it right now, she needs her to come and fight.

She looks to her friends, all of them prepping for a different kind of fight. One where she runs toward the enemy while they run away.

They hesitate, of course.

Harper steps forward to pull her in for one more tight hug. “This is not goodbye,” she whispers fiercely into her ear, even as her tone wavers with unshed tears. “We do not get you back just to lose you again, okay?” She lets go, gently pushing Clarke away in a way that tells Clarke she didn’t want to let go at all.

Monty gives her a sad smile that’s more revealing than anything he could say. He knows all of the ways that this can go wrong. “May we meet again.”

Clarke steps forward to grip him tightly in a hug, not having heard those words in what feels like forever. “We _will_ meet again,” she says. “I didn’t survive Praimfaya just to be taken down by some rogue criminals.”

“That you did,” Murphy chimes in, and Clarke would dare to say she hears a hint of pride in his voice. She looks to him, and he tilts his head toward the ship. “You get them. We’ll be waiting in the green in case Zeke’s army changes their minds.”

And Clarke wants to ask a million and one questions – about who all of these unfamiliar names are they keep mentioning, what’s happened to them since going to space, how they ended up being hostages on this ship – but now’s not the time.

Of all the ways she imagined seeing them all again, this certainly wasn’t it – two people short, the rest escaping to unknown territory on their own, Madi running into the fray of enemies on her own, Clarke chasing after her.

After waiting and waiting for six years, she thought she’d have more time.

But when were things ever easy?

So instead of taking all of her friends and Madi somewhere safe, somewhere where the monsters can’t get them, she leaves them.

She leaves them and begins running up the ramp right towards those monsters, refusing to glance back at them.

There’s only a few stragglers making their way into the ship, making Clarke stick out far more than she would like to as she starts merging with the crowd.

 _Madi sticks out too_ , she reminds herself.

Madi is in there looking just as much like a grounder as she does, and if she’s in there, nothing and no one is going to stop Clarke from getting her, Raven, and Bellamy out.

* * *

The further she pushes through the crowd, the more stares she gets.

But for whatever reason, no one stops her.

It’s clear that everyone is collectively moving towards the same destination, and she needs to break away from them before she gets trapped in an unmovable mass.

As the crowd flows forward, they hit an intersection of hallways and Clarke makes her move.

No one forcefully taking one of the hostages would head toward a highly populated area. They’d go someplace secluded, someplace no one would hear them.

She breaks from the group, ignoring the curious, if not suspicious, glances that are aimed in her direction and marches down the empty hallway with pure adrenaline fueling her every movement as the shuffle of people, the murmur of voices, gets softer and softer the further she goes until it’s only silence ringing in her ears and her heart slamming in her chest.

Clarke pauses at every new intersection she hits, listening for even a hint of voices to tell her where to turn. The ship is massive, and it could take her _hours_ to find them at this rate.

Then, she hears it.

It’s just the lowest rumble of sound, and she prays it’s not soldiers or machinery that she’s making her way towards. Prays that she’s getting closer rather than farther.

She follows the sound as it gets louder and louder, picking up on a male voice speaking as she heads down a lone hallway with a doorway at the end of it.

“It’s okay to cry, sweetheart,” the voice whispers softly, but without a hint of true empathy, making a chill run down Clarke’s spine. “We won't judge. You were so brave coming in like you did,” he goes on, tone mocking, “So young… So strong…”

Clarke may not have had much human interaction in the past six years, but it doesn’t take much to realize the voice sounds completely unhinged.

She doesn’t need to hear anything more.

Moving to peer in to assess the situation, another voice echoes out of the room before she gets the chance.

“Now hang on.”

Clarke freezes in her tracks.

 _That_ voice, she knows.

She’s dreamt of that voice more times than she can count, prayed to anyone listening that his voice would crackle over her radio on one of the 2,199 days she radioed him. And _hearing_ his voice hits her just as hard as seeing him did when she was watching from the bushes.

“Let her go, Vinson. She’s got nothing to do with any of this,” Bellamy reasons calmly.

But Clarke can hear it.

Six years, and she can still pick up on the stress, the worry, hidden underneath the calm.

The other voice laughs. “See, that’s where you’re wrong, Blake. She’s got _everything_ to do with it.”

And then she hears the most terrifying noise – a sound she hasn’t heard since Madi got trapped in that grounder net all those years ago, a sound Clarke could have gone her whole life without ever hearing again.

The petrified whimper of her daughter rings out from the room.

“Tell me Madi,” the voice softens again while addressing her, “where’s your mom at?”

Clarke’s already moving into the room before the last word is out of his mouth, raising her rifle to aim right at the man holding a knife to Madi’s throat.

“Right here.”


	31. 57 - I'm up to the challenge.

Maybe McCreary actually did shoot him.

Maybe he’s sprawled out on the ramp right now, bleeding out as his friends watch on helplessly.

Maybe his brain’s losing oxygen and it conjured up this whole messed up scenario, merging dream and nightmare together.

How else could he explain the appearance of Clarke, looking every bit alive in the doorway of the holding cells?

No reality would be so kind.

But it doesn’t stop Bellamy from staring, from gaping, at her. He studies her, taking in everything from the grounder clothes she’s wearing to the red staining her short blonde hair to the far-too familiar determination etched in her face.

It’s everything he’s forgotten over the years and then some, his brain doing a hell of a job conjuring up what Clarke would look like after spending six years on the ground.

“Ah, there she is,” Vinson says, sounding far too happy with himself.

Bellamy blinks.

And blinks, and blinks. He waits for the image of her to disappear, for the trance to break and confirm the delusion for what it is.

But when he focuses again, he’s still in the holding cell, being held back by Raven. Vinson’s still there with his knife, Madi’s still there with a bead of blood running down her neck, and Clarke’s still there aiming her rifle at Vinson, looking completely and utterly enraged.

Bellamy turns to Raven, whose grip on his arm has turned iron-like as she stares at Clarke too, shell-shocked in every sense of the word, confirming that she’s seeing what he’s seeing.

Which means–

It’s like his body is hit with a shock baton – everything hurting, a ringing only he can hear blaring in his ears, unable to utter a single syllable.

It’s _Clarke_.

Beautiful, and angry, and everything he never dared to hope for because she died when the Earth did, six years ago.

And yet, here she is. _Alive_.

“What I don’t get, Blake,” Vinson calls, pulling Bellamy’s attention to him, “is that you’ve got all these beautiful women ready to go up in arms for you, and you do _nothing_ about it. So much loveliness wasted because you don’t know how to appreciate them properly.”

Bellamy’s gut twists as Vinson strokes Madi’s neck deliberately with the blade, drawing another whimper from the scared girl who tries to remain as still as she can in her terror. One wrong move and the knife will cut deep.

It’s too much for Bellamy to stand as he yanks his bleeding arm out of Raven’s firm grip to take another step closer. “That’s _enough_ ,” Bellamy all but shouts, wanting, _needing_ to get Madi away before anything worse can happen.

Vinson looks delighted as he takes a step back from Bellamy and Raven, that much closer to Clarke. He keeps Madi in front of his own body as Clarke tracks every movement with her gun, eyes on the knife on Madi’s throat, on _her daughter’s_ throat – one of many facts he’s struggling to wrap his head around.

He glances back at Vinson and Madi, knowing Clarke can’t take the shot. Not when Madi’s being used as a human shield.

Taking another step forward, Bellamy’s own gaze stays fixed on the calculated motions of the blade. The only way any of this could end in their favor is if they get that knife away from Madi and give Clarke a chance to shoot.

“Show me how to appreciate them then,” he says, swallowing down on the acid climbing up his throat at what he’s asking, praying that Vinson won’t be able to say no to the trap Bellamy’s setting for him.

It doesn’t stop everyone from freezing and staring at him in shock.

Everyone but Clarke, whose focus doesn’t waver.

Vinson tilts his head, considering.

“Alright, Blake. I’m up to the challenge,” he says, not able to resist whatever obsession drives him. “You see, the first thing you need to do is drink in the uniqueness of each individual woman,” he explains, and Bellamy thinks he might be sick as Vinson brings the knife to caress Madi’s cheek, Madi flinching as she tries to remain strong. “The second thing,” he goes on as he lifts the knife away, pointing it at Bellamy like he’s pointing a finger.

And thankfully, they’ll never know what the second step to being a serial killer is as Clarke takes the opening she’s given, avoiding Madi’s thin legs and blowing out Vinson’s exposed knee cap with a single shot.

Bellamy moves as soon as the shot rings out, grabbing Madi’s arm and yanking her into his arms as Vinson curls forward with a howl, knife clattering to the ground.

Raven dives for the knife right as Vinson hits the floor with a thud.

Bellamy watches Raven move to stand next to Clarke as he feels Madi’s small arms wrap around his middle tightly, the action an echo of memories of his little sister holding him just as tight when they were kids. He cradles her head and hugs her back. “You’re okay, you’re safe,” he hushes when he feels her entire body shaking.

She merely squeezes him tighter in response.

He’s so focused on comforting Madi, he misses the conversation going on between Clarke and Raven as Vinson’s pained moans echo off the concrete walls.

“Do we lock him up or kill him?” He picks up on Clarke asking Raven as Clarke glares down at Vinson, and Bellamy knows _exactly_ which choice she wants.

He knows what Raven’s response will be too even before she answers vehemently. “Kill him.”

Bellamy tucks Madi’s head into his shoulder just as the second shot sounds out the moment the words are out of Raven’s mouth, leaving deafening silence in its wake.

The silence holds until he hears his name being whispered into his shoulder, surprising him. “Bellamy,” Madi murmurs, hesitating before continuing, “I’m really fucking happy you’re alive.”

It’s enough to startle a laugh out of him, overwhelmed in every sense of the word at this whirlwind of a child.

“Right back at you kid,” he tells her, glancing up just in time to catch blue eyes watching them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know we've been jumping back and forth with POVs, but we're going to be sticking with Bellamy for the next one too!


	32. 65 - Look at me- just breathe, okay?

Bellamy tilts his head to look at her face, an endless number of questions flooding his brain now that the immediate threat is taken care of.

Before he can even think of voicing a single one of his million questions though, her eyes fall to the girl still in his arms, calling Madi’s name with a shaky voice.

At the sound of her name, Madi gives him a wobbly smile and one more tight squeeze before letting go of the tight grip she had on him and plowing into Clarke’s open arms, collectively bursting into sobs as the prior events catch up with her.

He watches Clarke sway with her, hushing and humming to calm her down, and again, he thinks he might have stepped into some sort of dream as he stands there, unsure what to do, what to say.

There’s just no way this is actually happening.

It’s not possible that she’s here, not just alive, but with a kid who sees her as a parent.

But then she speaks again, her voice ringing in his ears, and he realizes with a start he’d forgotten what she sounds like.

“Look at me,” she says to Madi, cradling Madi’s head in her hands, tucking stray hairs behind the girl’s ears, “just breathe, okay?”

Madi nods her head, following Clarke’s directions as Clarke takes deep breaths with her.

“Good,” she soothes, gentle in a way he rarely ever saw. “We have to leave, do you think you can hold your gun?”

Madi’s eyes widen, anxiety clear at even the thought of having to fight more. The sight kicks Bellamy into action, finally speaking up. “I’ll take the rifle.”

Clarke’s eyes meet his again, and all the questions are there, right on the tip of his tongue, begging to be asked.

But as quick as their eyes meet, hers flick away, looking back to Madi and tugging her toward the door. “Then let’s go,” she says, raising her rifle with one hand, holding onto Madi with the other. “I can’t imagine the rest of the ship’s occupants are any more friendly.”

In the next blink, they’re out the door, leaving Raven and Bellamy to gape at the empty doorway.

He opens his mouth to call out her name to tell them to hang on, to _wait_ – and freezes.

Six years.

He hasn’t spoken her name in six fucking years because he thought she was dead and he just couldn’t bring himself to say it. And now here she is, on a mission to get them and her daughter out with not a second to waste on things like the questions ready burst out of him.

Raven breaks his scrambled thoughts as she lets out a hysterical laugh he’s never heard before, the sound bubbling out of her involuntarily. “What just fucking happened?”

Bellamy shakes his head for good measure, one final check to shake the delusion if it is one. But they’re still in the holding cell, Vinson’s lifeless body is still slumped on the ground, and the sounds of their rescuers’ feet are echoing as they head further down the hallway.

“Only one way to find out,” he says, swallowing his questions for now as he picks up Madi’s abandoned rifle like it hasn’t been years since he’s handled one, knowing now’s not the time for questions when they’re still not sure if they’re in enemy territory or if they can trust Zeke at his word.

So for now, they choose to follow the duo out of the Eligius ship and into a new and unpredictable world.

A world where somehow, someway, Clarke Griffin is very much alive.

* * *

They sneak past the entourage carting Charmaine and her group to the exact holding cells they just left, knowing they’re in for a shock when they find Vinson’s body there.

But after that, it’s just Raven calling out directions to them so that they head in the right direction, her jaw locking every time she speaks as she bites down on her own questions.

Bellamy can relate as he stops himself from calling out to her for the thousandth time, her name now _begging_ to be said.

They make it out to the ramp without running into any of the other miners, and then it’s just the four of them quickening their pace down the ramp, heading towards the green land he had watched grow back slowly and surely while up in space.

He wants to take in the changing environment around him, he really does, but his focus refuses to waver from Clarke’s receding figure.

 _At the top of the hill_ , he swears. When their adrenaline has subsided and they’re all safely at the top where the green land begins, he’ll say something.

He turns to look back and make sure Raven isn’t lagging behind to find her limping over the rocky terrain carefully a few feet back, her waving him on when she sees him checking in.

And when he turns to continue his own trek, winded a little from exertion, his breath is quite literally knocked from his lungs as someone slams into him.

No, not someone.

He recognizes her instantly, his arms wrapping around her to catch her on instinct.

He stumbles for a moment on the slant of the hill, refusing to loosen his grip on her, but also not wanting to tumble back down the hill.

She’s still holding onto him just as tightly when he gets his feet planted, her arms wrapped around his shoulders, her face tucked in his neck.

“You’re so fucking late,” she mumbles into his skin, voice choked with tears that drip onto his skin.

Somehow, against all odds, he starts laughing as his own vision blurs. “I’m so fucking late,” he agrees, tilting his head to rest in her hair and closing his eyes as his own tears flow freely down his cheeks as it really, truly hits him.

She’s _here_ , the physical proof in his arms telling him she’s every bit alive.

“And I’ve got so many questions,” he tells her, feeling her nod against his neck.

“I know, me too,” she says, picking her head up to look at him, her cheeks flushed and wet from her tears. She’s the absolute best thing he’s seen in years. “It’s just,” she pauses as she ducks her head on a smile like she can’t help it, making sure to look at him before finishing. “Hi Bellamy.”

He finds himself smiling too, even if he refuses to look away from those beautiful blue eyes, ones he never thought he’d ever see again.

“Hey Clarke,” he answers breathlessly, her name rolling off his tongue like it’s the easiest thing on Earth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧


	33. 44 - I don't know why I'm crying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 9 days until the premiere!  
> And 15 chapters left in this fic (EEK!)!!
> 
> I do intend on finishing this by next Tuesday for the premiere. How? I guess we shall see.... But double updates are definitely in this fic's future :D

She’s planning to wait until the Eligius ship is far out of their sight.

Her focus narrows into the sole goal of getting them as far from danger as she is physically capable of.

 _Don’t look back until you’re sure you can handle it_ , she tells herself.

She’ll get them to safety, and then she’ll let everything hit her.

Madi could have _died_.

She _killed_ someone.

Bellamy is _right there_.

It all fights to overwhelm her – the pure terror that coursed through her when that monster had Madi, the shock of taking another human life without a second thought, the ridiculous hope that her wildest wishes are finally within her grasp, trailing right behind her.

And the only thing keeping her on that calm, single-minded track is the comfort of Madi’s solid warmth and reassurance that she’s alive and well beside her as they make their escape up the hill and the steady and unsteady footfalls of Bellamy and Raven behind them.

But as soon as the steady footsteps halt, only leaving unsteady ones echoing to her ears, those emotions she’s been trying to keep at bay slam into her with the force of a thousand shock batons as she whips around to find him, fearing she’ll see him shot to the ground or not there at all, simply a figment of her imagination.

Instead she finds herself staring at his back as he checks on Raven, his body heaving slightly with the heavy breaths he’s taking from exertion.

She should turn around and keep going.

 _He’s fine, they’re good, keep going_.

She should fight tooth and nail to push those emotions away until a safer time as Madi stands right beside her, leaning her head onto Clarke’s arm as she watches them too. “You didn’t even get to hug him yet,” she whispers, innocently observant even after everything she’s been through today.

It makes Clarke smile as she wraps an arm around her fearless _strik natblida_.

Madi knows how this particular part of the story is supposed to go. The princess sees her friends and doesn’t hesitate for a moment before wrapping them all in hugs six years in the making.

The princess isn’t calm and focused. No, the princess is damn near bursting with excitement that they’re finally _home_.

So honestly, fuck calm and focused.

She’s spent six years talking to him on a radio, begging just to hear his voice. And now he’s here, and she’s done pushing the reality of that to the sidelines until it’s safe. At the very least, she should get to fucking hug him.

All it takes is the smallest of nudges from Madi, a reassurance that it’s okay that she goes, that she’ll stay right where she is.

So Clarke does what her heart’s been begging the rest of her to do since seeing him tied up on that ramp.

She runs to him, knowing from experience he’ll catch her.

* * *

Her name rolling off his tongue is still echoing in her mind even as Raven’s voice breaks through her delirious joy.

“What, he gets hugged and I’m left to keep trudging up this damn hill?” She asks as sternly as she can with how out of breath she is.

It only makes Clarke’s smile widen even more, if possible, as she finally looks away from Bellamy’s own watery eyes as he watches her like she might disappear at any moment, to take in the sight of Raven Reyes marching towards her with a determination that might just barrel all three of them right back down the hill they’re climbing.

She doesn’t let go of Bellamy until Raven’s reaching out to grip Clarke in her own tight hug, long arms holding onto Clarke with everything Raven has in her. “How are you here?” Raven mumbles into Clarke’s shoulder, her hold strong and firm and _real_ , just like the tears beginning to stain her shirt. Raven pulls back far enough to wipe a hand across her eyes. “I don’t know why I’m crying,” she laughs, “if anyone’s going to survive the fucking apocalypse, it’s you. I just– I can’t believe it.”

“Me either,” Clarke agrees, her own tears threatening to spill again when Raven tugs her back in.

“Clarke,” Bellamy calls as Raven finally loosens her hold, and she’s never going to get tired of him saying her name. And from the look of wonder on his face, he won’t either. “The others are somewhere around here too. I told them to get to the green land, but we don’t know–”

“No I saw them,” Clarke says, letting go of Raven completely and glancing up the hill to where Madi stands watching them, the green trees standing tall behind her. She opens her mouth to tell them about seeing them on the ramp, but then her eyes trail further into the green where five familiar figures are slowly beginning to emerge. “I see them,” she corrects happily as Bellamy and Raven follow her line of sight and Madi moves to turn around too.

They wait at the top of the hill for the four of them to trudge the rest of the way up. Clarke rejoins Madi’s side, tugging on her hand in a comforting squeeze when she picks up on Madi’s nerves.

“ _Os_?” Clarke asks her, slipping into Trigedasleng to give her something familiar to hold on to.

This is it.

This is the moment they’ve fantasized about for years – the two of them reuniting with the seven warriors from the sky – and to Madi, Clarke’s sure the idea is almost daunting. It sure as hell is for her. Everything’s going to change.

Madi squeezes back, firm and strong. “Good,” she answers, giving Clarke a smile before pulling her along.

Monty, Harper, Murphy, Emori, and Echo keep a leery watch on the ship behind them, ready to warn them if an attack is to come. They watch and wait, ready to help now that their missing pieces (plus two more) are safe.

An attack never comes.

It’s almost like Eligius’s crew doesn’t care that their prisoners are missing, or that two of their people were shot and killed. The entire ship has gone dormant.

And once they reach the top, that dormant ship all but disappears from their minds as everyone moves and speaks at once. Disbelieving laughter fills the warm air, embraces are given readily, and over and over again, the sentiment is the same: They can’t believe it.

They can’t believe Clarke’s here, with a child, no less.

They can’t believe everyone’s still in one piece, nobody lost in the chaos of the past few hours.

They can’t believe they’re actually home, on _Earth_.

Clarke can.

Many days were rough, but she and Madi knew this day would eventually come. Her eyes catch Bellamy’s over the flutter of voices and people, eyes just as warm as she remembers.

She’s so grateful she never let go of that hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Strik natblida_ : Little nightblood  
>  _Os_?: Good?
> 
> As always, thank you for your patience and support! <3


	34. 78 - You weren't supposed to hear that.

Madi shows them where she hid the Rover as soon as the excitement of reuniting has settled into a calm sort of happiness.

Or as calm as they could possibly be under the circumstances, since as of an hour ago, everyone thought she was dead.

There’s still so many questions that have been left unanswered, both on her part and theirs, but she can’t ignore the creeping need to get everyone someplace safe before they start those conversations.

Someplace far, far away from that ship.

There’s more disbelief once the Rover is revealed, with Raven and Monty immediately badgering her with questions about its functionality and sturdiness.

“It’s gotten us around for years,” is what Clarke settles on in way of explanation, giving it a fond pat on the hood. She still feels that need to get away all too acutely.

“That much is clear,” Murphy shoots back dryly as he takes in the dents and scratches that coat its surface. “What, did you drive it into a tree?” He quips, to which Emori elbows him in the side.

“Only a couple,” Madi responds conversationally, missing the sarcasm as she moves to hop into the driver’s seat without a hint of hesitation. “Clarke’s a better lesson-teacher than driving-teacher, so they’re not _all_ from me,” she adds on, for clarification’s sake of course.

Clarke can’t help the smile that draws out of her as she watches the others eye Madi with a fondness even she didn’t think could be so instant.

“You can drive it?” She hears Bellamy ask Madi, and it’s only then that she allows herself to watch him again. She’s been careful not to let herself stare, but it’s an uphill battle, especially when she always finds his eyes already watching her with a look she can’t quite get a read on.

Except this time, his eyes then trail to Madi, his eyes light and curious in a way she can’t remember ever seeing.

“Mm hmm,” Madi hums in confirmation. “I can show you,” she offers readily, already turning the ignition to bring the vehicle to life.

The others jump at the sound, clearly not prepared for the guttural rustiness of the Rover.

Clarke steps in before Madi can drive away with the eight of them in the dust. “Maybe when we don’t have unwelcome visitors looming so close by,” Clarke reasons, lifting her eyebrows at Madi when she holds her ground in the driver’s seat.

Her stubbornness, young and carefree, holds for another moment before Madi’s rolling her own eyes and scooting into the passenger seat. “ _Fine_.”

And Clarke gives it to her, knowing Madi showing off a bit is much preferred to a shy Madi unwilling to talk.

Clarke lets out a sigh as she looks back to the others, feeling self-conscious for the first time when she’s met with varying degrees of surprise, confusion, and amusement from them.

“Um,” she says, moving toward the back of the Rover and swinging the back doors open. “Don’t mind the mess, we’ve been camping out in here for the past few weeks while scavenging. Just move the books and blankets out of the way and you’ll be able to fit on the benches and the floor.”

She feels the others move to stand behind her, peering into their makeshift camp.

“You’ve got a little home in here,” Harper says, marveling at the chimes dangling from the ceiling and the trinkets cluttering the floor.

“Wait until you see our actual camp,” Madi calls animatedly from the front, her eyes glittering with an excitement that makes Clarke’s heart swell.

They glance at Clarke for an explanation, to which she just shrugs. “It’s easier to show you than explain it. Plus I have a feeling we both are going to be doing more than enough of that once we get there.”

At that, Raven moves to hop right in. “Then screw you losers, I’m getting some bench space. The rest of you can fight over who sits on the floor.”

That’s all it takes for the rest of them to start scrambling into the back, pushing and arguing playfully until they’re all somewhat settled comfortably for the ride ahead.

All but one, that is.

She walks over to the right of the Rover where he’s tracing his hands almost reverently over the metal exterior on the vehicle, fingers dipping into the dents as he’s lost in thought.

“You weren’t supposed to hear that,” she tells him, and watches as his brows scrunch in confusion. “I imagined you berating me time and time again for messing up your precious Rover every time we added a new scratch or dent,” she explains softly, her tone gentle though her words are teasing. It’s enough to pull him from whatever thoughts he was lost in.

He gives her that same look, the one she wishes she knew what to do with. “I can’t believe it’s here,” he says, voice just as soft.

 _I can’t believe you’re here_ , is what she hears hidden between the lines.

Clarke takes a step towards him as his eyes watch her every movement, opening her mouth to say something, anything–

“Bellamy!” Madi calls as her head peaks out from the driver’s side. “You can sit up here with me and Clarke! I’ll sit in the middle!” She says excitedly.

And whatever moment there was is broken as he turns to smile at Madi. “Sounds like a plan, kid,” he says fondly before glancing once more back at Clarke.

The smile he gives her is small, but full of promise.

Later.

They’ll get their chance to talk.

She gives him her own helpless smile as he turns to walk in front of the Rover to the passenger side and swing open the door.

When Clarke is the only one not in the Rover, she takes a moment to close her eyes and take a deep breath, listening to all the life radiating out of the vehicle.

It’s only a second, and then she’s hopping into the driver’s seat and closing her own door behind her.

She places her hands on the wheel, her whole body vibrating along with it.

Madi bumps her leg with Clarke’s, much closer than she normally is with Bellamy squished in next to her. "To Eden?” She asks eagerly.

She catches Bellamy’s eyes over the top of Madi’s head.

“To Eden,” she confirms, and steps on the pedal.


	35. 68 - Well, this is where we live.

“So what happened in the ship?” Bellamy hears Emori ask from the back, voice bouncing with every bump of the Rover. Her and Raven are sitting on part of what little bench space there is, with Murphy and the others sliding around on the ground near them. The question’s probably directed towards Raven, but she says it loud enough to invite any of the four of them who were there to answer.

“Yeah,” Harper chimes in. “How’d you guys get away?”

Bellamy turns his head towards them to respond, hesitating when he catches the look Madi and Clarke share silently right before they direct their attention back to the passing trees outside. “Vinson had Raven and me trapped,” he explains, pausing to meet Raven’s eyes in the back before continuing, “and then Clarke and Madi found us and got us out.”

He imagines the look Raven sends back to him mirrors the one he just witnessed between Clarke and Madi.

There’s no need to go into detail about what Vinson intended to do, what he could have done if Clarke hadn’t gotten there when she did. They all got away, that’s all that matters. And from that one look, Raven understands too.

“And Vinson?” Echo cuts in, speaking up for the first time since they all reunited at the top of the hill, the name sounding like poison coming from her lips.

“He’s dead,” Raven replies bluntly, choosing not to elaborate on that part either.

Raven’s words settle in the air as everyone registers what she just said.

“So we should go back then,” Harper says, and Bellamy thinks he’s the only one that catches the acceleration of the Rover increasing the moment those words are out of her mouth. He glances at Clarke to see her staring resolutely out at the pathway ahead of them, eyes trained on the landscape. Madi’s eyes keeping dancing from Clarke to the window, and back to Clarke again.

He turns back to the group to see Monty nod his head from where he’s seated on the ground. “We should talk to Zeke. He said he was our ally, we should see if he actually meant it.”

“Especially if he’s the one in charge now,” Harper agrees instantly, to which Monty seems almost startled that they are in agreement on anything at this point.

“I’m not sure how hot of an idea that is,” Raven says, her own eyes watching the back of Clarke’s head intently. She’s picked up on it too.

The Rover is definitely going faster.

The others look at her in confusion and shock, immediately jumping into _why_ ’s and _why not_ ’s and he knows he’s going to have to acknowledge that feeling that’s been climbing up his spine slowly and carefully since Vinson was taunting Madi with that knife.

“They knew,” he tells them, settling back in his seat as he lets himself accept the truth for the first time too.

The Eligius crew knew Clarke was alive.

They knew how important she was to them.

They even knew about Madi and her relationship with Clarke.

_Where’s your mom at?_

Vinson’s voice echoes in his ears, just as the image of Madi’s terrified face morphing into shock flashes across his vision.

He remembers the confusion he felt at the interaction, not understanding how Vinson knew anything about Madi at all, least of all about her mother.

But then seconds later everything he had known to be true capsized as Clarke barreled into the room.

He _knew_ they were hiding something from them. That McCreary and Vinson were holding something over their heads, something even Zeke hadn’t been willing to reveal to them.

But he never could have even began to imagine that _Clarke_ was what they were baiting them with.

The others stay blessedly silent, the truth hitting them too.

“How would they know that?” Murphy finally says, sounding angrier with every word he speaks. “How _the fuck_ could they have possibly known that Clarke was alive?”

“Not just Clarke,” Raven adds, her voice distant as her mind races to find an answer. “They knew about Madi too. Everyone, including Zeke. Even if he is in charge there now, I’m not sure we can trust him.”

Bellamy catches the tilt of Clarke’s head out of the corner of his eye, just as he catches her grip on the wheel tighten further at the mention of Zeke.

Madi’s eyes settle on Clarke, watching her with concern.

And Bellamy knows _she_ feels the Rover going faster as well.

The others continue talking over each other in the back, talking about the impossibilities of Eligius knowing, theories of how they could have possibly come across that information, and ideas of what to do about Zeke.

But Bellamy’s eyes remain on Clarke and Madi.

He watches Clarke’s hands turn white on the handle as her eyes stare off into the distance, mind clearly somewhere else as the conversations echo to the front.

He watches Madi as concern etches deeper into her features.

“They heard us, didn’t they,” Madi all but whispers, just enough for Clarke, and consequently Bellamy, to hear.

The others carry on in the back, oblivious to what Madi said, but Bellamy’s hanging on to every word.

Clarke’s eyes focus, coming back from whatever train of thought she was lost in. She blinks once before glancing at Madi, and then him, where her eyes stay.

“ _Sha_ ,” she says with a sadness that makes him ache, because even Bellamy knows what that means in Trig from what Echo has taught him.

The single word rattles Bellamy in a way he didn’t think was possible at the moment. Too many impossible things have happened today for much else to surprise him.

But before he can even begin to ask what it all means, he feels the Rover start to slow.

The others may not have felt the acceleration, but they certainly feel the deceleration as their own conversations come to a halt.

What’s even more shocking is the way Clarke pushes whatever she’s feeling somewhere he can’t see right before turning to address everyone in the back, any sadness or confusion he saw seconds ago replaced by a slowly growing smile.

“We’re here!” Madi exclaims excitedly, any of her own hesitance and uncertainty dashed away by the arrival at their location as she climbs over Clarke and swings the driver’s door open to jump out, immediately racing to the back of the Rover.

Clarke’s head turns to watch Madi for a moment before looking back at the others, and this time, he can see the glint of excitement in her own eyes too.

“Well, this is where we live,” she explains, just as Madi yanks on the doors and sunlight floods the vehicle.

The shock of light kicks everyone else into movement as they slide out the back, surprise and delight coloring their voices as they start to look around.

“Welcome to Eden guys,” she calls warmly, even though he doubts they hear her.

He feels her watching him as he stares out the back of the Rover, and when he turns to look back at her, her gaze doesn’t flick away.

Her focus is entirely on him when she adds softly, “Welcome home, Bellamy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Sha_ : Yes
> 
> So.
> 
> Clearly I did not get this fic done by the end of the hiatus. Which, is _okay_! Obviously it took some hits from canon with the first episode, but I'm still really happy with this fic so far and absolutely intend to finish it. With that being said, this will definitely be in AU territory now more than ever, but again, that's _okay_!!
> 
> I'm planning to finish this fic up within the next few weeks before we really get deep into the season, so I hope you'll stick around to see how things pan out with my version of S5 :D


	36. 14 - Are you done with that?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all! Just a reminder that this fic was primarily written before S5 premiered, so it is definitely canon divergent at this point. So in this, Emori and Murphy are still together, Monty and Harper broke up, and Bellamy and Echo didn't become a thing.
> 
> (Yeah, I really got the couple-predictions mega-wrong this season, lol..)
> 
> Also-- the Eden in this fic is not the Eden we've come to know from the show!

It takes time to explain.

It starts with Clarke and Madi telling them how they created Eden – finding the greenest land that had grown back, choosing an area open enough to build while still having the shade of the trees to shelter them, looking for somewhere close to their favorite fishing spot, scavenging all around for materials once they agreed on a location.

She relents to making a small fire as her and Madi speak only after their insistent confidence that the Eligius crew won’t be coming after them. And yet, her skin still tingles with lingering apprehension as they gather around the fire sharing stories, the fire bright and the smoke disappearing into the breeze.

_I called you._

That then carries into telling them in the most condensed version she can manage of what the past six years have been like – how she survived the initial wave and found Madi, how the bunker is still buried in rubble, how she thought the Eligius ship was _their_ ship this morning.

_I called all of you. Everyday, for years._

At that, Raven snorts without a hint of humor. “We would’ve been down a couple days ago if they hadn’t gotten to us first.”

That leads into them telling her and Madi what their past six years have been like as they share the jerky Clarke had stored before her and Madi had left on their scavenging trip turned rescue mission.

“Ugh, don’t judge me when I eat this in two bites,” Murphy states as he licks the grease off of his fingers like it’s its own separate meal. They all nod along in agreement, Clarke noting how they seem to be savoring every bite they take. “Are you done with that?” Murphy asks Echo, even as she glares at him and tucks her own jerky closer to her chest.

He’s joking. She thinks.

While they continue to eat, they tell their own stories. Clarke listens as hungrily as they eat, wanting to know everything – every second, every single moment that happened after she watched from the top of that tower as the ship broke through the atmosphere and disappeared into space all those years ago.

 _I never stopped._ We _never stopped. It gave us hope, even when things got tough._

They tell her and Madi as much as they can, trading turns in adding to stories like a well-oiled machine, in sync with each other in a way Clarke doesn’t remember being there before. Emori tells them about the lights blinking on the moment Clarke had gotten the dish in place. Raven explains how she pretty much rebuilt the ship from scratch only to be forced to abandon it by Eligius. Monty, Harper, Murphy, and Echo fill them in on what they’ve learned of Eligius since being held captive. The six of them complain and joke about what eating algae all day everyday was like as they continue to carefully work through the jerky like it’s the most delicious meal they’ve ever had.

Clarke can’t help but think it just might be.

It takes time from both ends to explain six years of living in as little bit of time as possible, and Clarke’s not sure there’ll ever be enough time for everything she wants to know.

She and Madi take turns sharing stories, just as Raven, Monty, Murphy, Harper, Emori, and Echo add story upon story when someone says something that then reminds them of something else.

It’s equal parts exhilarating and overwhelming, having them finally here, listening to everything she wasn’t there to experience herself.

And through it all, as her eyes jump from person to person who speaks around the fire, not able to get enough, she always ends up snagging on Bellamy again.

Bellamy, who watches and listens attentively, but never seems to add his own stories in.

She catches him watching her as much as she watches him, and she notes this smile on his face every time – amused by the antics and dramatics of their friends, but also happy in a way Clarke’s certain she’s never seen as the others rant and rave and joke. Like he’s used to it. Like it isn’t something entirely new for her, for Madi.  

 _You kept me sane, Bellamy. When things felt impossible, or Madi was hurt, or I felt so incredibly lonely, talking to_ you _got me through it._

The words run on repeat in her head. Every piece of the conversation she wants to have with them, with him, but is unsure how to do. The words are there, but she just can’t bring herself to say them, not with the way they’re smiling and laughing, not with how Madi’s eyes are bright even if she’s just as overstimulated as Clarke is.

Madi _knows_ these people, even if this is her first time meeting them in person. They’re the heroes from her stories come to life.

So how can Clarke ruin that by telling them how exactly Eligius knew about them? The thought keeps her quiet as the others carry on.

Raven said they knew about Clarke and Madi, but it wasn’t just that. They also knew there was a ship of people who had been on Earth once, floating around in space somewhere.

Eligius knew her friends’ names.

They knew who her friends were and they knew her friends had connections on the ground.

All because of her radio calls.

Eligius used whatever information Clarke unknowingly gave them to their advantage.

So no, with the energy light around them and the laughter of her friends and Madi filling the air, she won’t tell them it’s her fault they were held captive. She doesn’t tell them about the radio. And Madi might keep looking at her expectantly, like she’s waiting for Clarke to start the conversation, but she doesn’t push it when Clarke doesn’t.

_We’re alive because of you all._

And she very nearly got them all killed.

* * *

The stories continue until Madi releases a yawn that she clearly had been withholding for quite some time.

Yawns are contagious after all, and the others follow suit, reluctantly admitting their exhaustion from the events of today and the past few aboard the Eligius ship.

Clarke shows them the areas she and Madi had built for all of them. They had made individual structures for everyone, not wanting to assume relationships would last six years, or new ones wouldn’t have formed. But still, the structures are big enough for more than one, and when Murphy and Emori head toward one together, she has to bite back on her smile.

And when she sees Harper and Monty go separate ways, she’s glad they made more than enough.

She tries to be casual when she looks to see where Bellamy heads, only to see him still by the fire.

And she thinks she accomplishes the subtlety, until she turns back to Madi giving her an extremely unimpressed, knowing look.

Clarke sticks her tongue out, wrapping her arm around Madi’s shoulders to steer her toward their own little hut.

“Let’s get you to bed, _strikon_ ,” which only succeeds in making Madi scrunch her nose. She thinks she’s getting too old for such names.

“It doesn’t look like _Bellamy’s_ going to sleep yet,” Madi says slyly, arching her eyebrows exactly like the pre-teen she’s quickly becoming, probably hoping to remind Clarke she’s not little anymore.

Clarke squeezes her shoulders in warning and acquiesce, even as she feels her cheeks warm as they duck into their wooden shelter.

She doesn’t look back at him again, but she’s hoping once she gets Madi to sleep, he’ll still be there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Strikon_ : Little one
> 
> Here's to getting this fic finished by the end of S5 :D


	37. 70 - You are one of the best things that has ever happened to me.

“Are you going to go talk to him?” Madi asks casually as she moves to sprawl across her bed mat, clearly missing it after spending night after night in the Rover.

Clarke hums in acknowledgement of the question, but continues her task of getting Madi’s nightly glass of water, reveling in the routine for as long as Madi will let her do it. She thinks the question is a continuation of the playful teasing Madi had started when she pointed out Bellamy by the fire, no response needed.

“Because I wouldn’t mind if you did,” Madi continues. “I won’t be upset,” she insists, and that gives Clarke pause. She picks up on the tension in the otherwise casual conversation instantly, getting the feeling there’s more to it than the light tone from outside had implied.

She had wanted to spend this quiet time with Madi not just to help her fall asleep, but to check in with her too. It’s been quite the day, and Madi’s experienced such a vast range of emotions that surely has her feeling overwhelmed and confused. And picking up on the sudden change in mood from the happy, smiling girl by the fire from a few minutes ago to now only confirms their need to check in. Still, Clarke gets the water filled before waiting to turn back to Madi, seeing if she says anything else. When she doesn’t, Clarke turns to find her now sitting cross-legged on her mat as she twists her hands, a tell-tale sign that she wants to say something but doesn’t know how to.

Clarke can relate to the feeling all too acutely.

She brings the water over to Madi, handing her the cup so she has something to do with her hands while Clarke moves to lay alongside her on Madi’s mat.

When Clarke lays down, Madi follows, putting her water aside and snuggling into Clarke’s side like they’ve done thousands of times. They lay quietly for a moment.

“How are you feeling about all of this?” Clarke asks into the silence. It’s dark in their hut, and Madi’s tucked in so close that Clarke’s speaking towards the ceiling.

“Okay,” Madi mumbles, and Clarke can hear the _but_ that hangs on the end of that one spoken word.

“But it's a lot to take in, right?”

Madi only nods in response, a sure sign that she’s close to tears. “ _Niron,_ ” Clarke calls softly, only using the word in tender moments like these, “what has you so upset?” She reaches up to card her fingers through Madi’s hair, hoping the gesture will have a calming effect.

“I’m not upset,” Madi says on a watery voice. “It’s just–,” she stops as she moves so that she can see Clarke’s face. “I knew everything was going to change eventually, and that we’ve been preparing for today for forever, but it wasn’t– it wasn’t–,” her breath hitches again, today’s events catching up with her.

“It wasn’t _how_ you expected things would happen,” Clarke finishes for her, thinking back to when Vinson had that knife to Madi’s throat.

It should have been a happy occasion, watching their friends’ ship land from the sky. They would have run to them, and greeted them with relieved laughs and hugs. Clarke would have been able to give Madi a proper introduction, instead of guns and criminals and hostages. It’s exactly the opposite of what Clarke has ever imagined whenever she dared to venture to think about what reuniting with everyone would be like. But Madi gets what she’s saying all the same.

She nods, biting her lip to keep her tears at bay.

“It’s not that I’m not happy they’re finally here,” she says sincerely, as if Clarke would ever think otherwise. “It’s just– like you said. A lot.”

Clarke sits up at that, reaching out to swipe the stray tears that escaped from the corners of Madi’s eyes.

“And it’s absolutely okay to feel like that, honey. No one's going to fault you for feeling the way you do. _I_ feel like it’s a lot.”

“You do?” Madi asks, already trying to compose herself as she moves to tuck her hair behind her ears.

“I do,” Clarke confirms, tugging her in for a hug. “Things are going to be different now, but I think it’s going to be a good kind of different. And if it’s ever not, and you’re not feeling great about something, I want you to talk to me. I always want to know what you’re thinking, and I’ll always want to make it better. You are one of the best things that has ever happened to me, Madi,” Clarke she says softly into the top of Madi’s head, “and I’ll do _anything_ to make sure you’re happy and safe.”

“Okay,” Madi responds, face still tucked into Clarke’s neck, no tension trailing the word like it had in the beginning. “Can you tell me a story until I fall asleep?”

Clarke draws them back so that they’re laying down again. “With how often you remind me that you’re too old for things, I thought stories was going to be added to the list too,” Clarke teases, trying to draw a smile out of her.

“Not _your stories,_ Clarke,” Madi chastises quietly, even as she shifts to get more comfortable.

“I should appreciate it while I still can, I suppose, since I’m sure you’ll be saying differently once you hear Bellamy’s stories.”

“Yours will always be the best,” Madi mumbles sleepily, already beginning to drift off before Clarke can even start to weave a tale.

Still, the honest sentiment has Clarke’s own eyes pricking with tears. “I love you, Madi,” she whispers into her daughter’s hair.

“I love you too, Clarke,” she hums softly. “You can go talk to Bellamy once I’m asleep,” she adds with a sincerity that tells Clarke she truly means it.

Clarke simply kisses the top of her hair. “Alright, I’ve got a new story for you tonight.”

“ _Sha_?” Madi asks, interest peaked despite sleep tugging at her.

“It’s about the day our seven warriors arrived home to the kingdom.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Niron_ : Loved one  
>  _Sha_ : Yeah
> 
> Just a Mama Bear taking care of her cub ❤


	38. 1 - Do you want me to leave?

After everyone heads to bed for the night, Bellamy finds himself still radiating with an energy that will undoubtedly chase sleep away.

So as everyone heads to their huts – things Clarke and Madi _made_ for them under the impression that they’d be here someday to use them – Bellamy stays by the fire, trying to get a grasp on his thoughts and all the feelings that come with them.

As Clarke and Madi spoke around the fire, he hung onto every word, wanting, _needing_ to know how she did it. How despite every single odd on the planet being stacked against her, she found a child. They built a home together, planned for their friends’ eventual arrival.

It makes him nauseas.

Here they all were, up in space going about their lives, working to head back to Earth and hoping to join up with the others from the bunker, not even toying with the idea that Clarke could have made it.

He would never forget her, of course, but he also could never allow himself that hope. It took him so long to even be able let his battered heart and mind lead as one.

And here she was, down here, dedicating her time so that _they_ \- Bellamy, Raven, _everyone_ \- had a place to call home when they came down.

She never doubted they were alive, even as they mourned her.

Bellamy feels his mind spiraling, not sure how to settle himself again. The overwhelming guilt he felt for years about leaving her feels like it’s crashing through him with a vengeance, and he’s not quite sure what to do. All he knows is that the panic is rising and he’s defenseless against it.

The snap of a twig nearby pulls his attention, his head twisting toward the sound to find Clarke standing on the outskirts of where they had all been sitting around the fire.

The sight of her centers him far more than the sound had, even has his eyes catch on the foot that stepped on the twig – the foot that _very purposely_ stepped on the twig.

Bellamy looks back to her face with an arched brow, to which she smiles sheepishly as she takes a step closer to him.

“I didn’t want to startle you,” she explains, taking another step, her movements almost careful. “You looked very deep in thought.” She hesitates. “Do you want me to leave?”

Her words startle a strangled laugh out of him, because of course she’d know he was lost in his head. She’s always known him.

But how could she think he’d ever want her to leave after everything?

“Of course not,” he says, his reaction enough to get her moving again as she sits, clearly giving him space despite their proximity. “I thought maybe you had settled in for the night.”

Clarke hums. “I wanted to get Madi to bed and check in with her.”

“Is she okay?” He asks instantly, worried that he read Madi wrong from when she was by the fire while they ate. She seemed happy, energetic in a way that only a child can be. But maybe he can’t read anyone anymore, except for the six people he’s spent six years with.

Clarke’s just as much of a mystery to him, and he hates it.

She waits a moment before responding, like she’s really thinking about her response before she says it. “I think she will be. She’s so used to hearing stories about you all, it’s just a lot to have everyone here in the flesh now. Not–,” she adds in a rush, eyes going wide as her words register, “not that we wouldn’t want you here in the flesh! It’s just– I mean–”

“I think you need to stop saying ‘flesh.’”

She hangs her head on an embarrassed huff.

She looks up with a smirk, giving him a pointed look that he thinks is not supposed to look as cute as it does. “I’m trying to figure out what to say,” she tells him softly, looking down at her hands again, making his heart clench. Not with heartache, but with a longing he feels down to his toes.

“Me too,” he says honestly, finding himself mirroring her actions, looking down at his own hands unconsciously.

This shouldn’t be difficult. This is _Clarke,_ the person who knows him best, who _he_ knows best.

_Six years ago, maybe_ , but he shoves that thought away as quick as it comes, refusing to let a gap form between them before they even have a chance. Not now, not ever again.

He gets up from where he’s been sitting, moving around the area Clarke and Madi clearly made with the intent of having many people gathered around a campfire – laughing, joking, telling stories. He drags his hand through the colored scarves and banners tied onto nearby branches and trees, giving the place a welcoming feel just as the rest of the area does – their home. He can't help but wonder how many times she’s imagined it – all of them here, just as they were tonight.

He refuses to let that gap widen.

But no matter how many questions were ready to burst out of him earlier, it’s a statement that ends up spilling from his lips.

“I thought you were dead,” he tells her as he turns toward her, trying not to let his voice break on the words. He had felt her eyes on his back, knew she had been watching his movements, but still, she had given him space, stayed where she had settled on the log.

The sorrow that graces her features makes him regret the words.

“I know,” she says sadly, as if she hadn’t been sure. As if she had hoped they knew she wasn’t. She takes a breath, seeming to shake something from her mind, but then continues. “But I am. _We_ are,” she clarifies, glancing back at the hut where Madi sleeps. “And every second of the past six years was worth it knowing that our friends are safe and sleeping in huts nearby and you’re standing right in front of me.”

At that, Bellamy can’t help but scoff. Not at her, but at himself. “Clarke, I left you,” he reminds her, as if that could somehow be news to her.

She stands at that, her stance bracing in a way that is so achingly familiar.

“I know that,” she says fiercely, crossing her arms. “And I’m _glad_ you did. You did what you had to do so that you and the others survived.”

“And now what?” He asks, sharper than he wants to be. But the guilt is clawing at him, trying to keep him in its clutches even as he feels Clarke act as his defense, trying to wrench him away from it.

“Now we _live_ ,” she tells him, moving towards him. She reaches out to him, but hesitates. He’s not sure if it’s because of him, or herself, but when he reaches his own hand out to her, she doesn’t hesitate to take it.

He’s hyper-aware of the warmth of her hand in his.

The sigh she releases is full of relief, and instead of his heart aching with longing, it begins thumping a rapid beat in his chest.

She tugs on his hand, pulling him back to where they had originally been sitting. “Tell me about space,” she requests gently as she settles back down on the log, her hand still in his dragging him with her.

It has him smiling despite the path his thoughts had been taking him.

“Only if you tell me about Earth,” he counters, plopping down closer to her, space between them be damned.

She rolls her eyes, but it’s playful in a way he’s never seen. “The beard’s new,” she says with a tilt of her head, and he feels the sweep of her eyes across his face like a physical touch.

It has him reaching unconsciously to rub at his chin before letting his hand drop. “The short hair’s new too,” he counters, and watches as she does the same, her hand lightly tracing over the red that keeps catching his eye.

“Always quick with a response,” she says on a long-suffering sigh, even as she smiles, fingers still toying with her hair.

He might never get used to that – a happy and alive Clarke Griffin, giving her smiles freely.

But boy does he want to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bellarke communicating? Whaaaaaaat??
> 
> Bellarke communicating but still keeping important things to themselves *cough cough* radio calls *cough cough*? Now _that_ sounds more like them ;)


	39. 73 - You don't have to stay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Show Day!
> 
> I'm planning on double updating today since we're nearing the end and I want to reach my (ever-changing) goal of finishing this fic by next week's finale! So keep an eye out for that a little later today :)

Clarke wakes the next morning feeling lighter than she has in years – possibly since before she was even put in lockup on the Ark.

They had talked for hours, her and Bellamy.

They talked about everything and nothing at all. He told her about raiding the abandoned books while up in space and reading them over and over and over again. How Murphy of all people found him glasses when those pages started to blur. Little tidbits of information that would seem pointless to anyone else, but he knew how important hearing about those small moments meant to her.

She told him more about Madi and how peaches of all things became the bridge that connected them in the beginning. How now she could relate to how he must have felt raising Octavia. But at the mention of his sister’s name, now knowing there was nothing he could do at this point to help her, if she and the others were still even alive in the bunker, a shadow crossed his face that had nothing to do with the fire’s flames.

Clarke wanted to dash the look away as soon as it graced his features.

After that, they solely stuck to the little things, avoiding anything heavy and deep and painful for another time. She’s hoping they have more time than she can even begin to imagine to break down everything they want to know about each other’s past six years.

But after hours of those little things, Clarke felt like a gigantic weight was lifted from her.

She had been so worried when she first came back to the fire that she wouldn’t be able to do it. That after thousands of radio calls to him laying out every aspect of her day, she wouldn’t be able to do it all again, with him here – listening and responding and engaging.

She should have known she could tell him anything, whether she knew he was listening or not.

They talked until the fire burned to embers, and only then did Bellamy suggest to getting some rest.

After watching him head to his own hut, closer to hers and Madi’s than any of the others (which had her immediately suspicious of her friends), she headed back to Madi, curling up with her daughter instead of going to lay on her own mat.

“ _Os_?” Madi had mumbled in a haze of sleep as Clarke snuggled up next to her.

“ _Toli os_ ,” she breathed in response before finally allowing herself to rest.

* * *

“So, I’ve been thinking about something that you’re not gonna like,” Raven says as they again gather around the fire pit in the light of the morning, digging into bowls of oats. Madi and her had been experimenting with seeds they had scavenged ever since they were sure the ground would hold them.

Bellamy had smiled softly at her as he had emerged from his hut, taking the space next to her not currently occupied by Madi without much preamble, grabbing the bowl she offered him with a duck of his head that had Harper lifting her eyebrows knowingly at Clarke from over Bellamy’s shoulder.

“Excellent start to the morning, Reyes,” Murphy shoots back immediately, pulling Clarke from having to silently communicate back with Harper. “I too want to discuss something that’s probably going to immediately ruin my day as I eat food that quite literally has rejuvenated by taste buds after waking up safe for the first time in days.”

Raven does nothing more than shoot her eyes skyward in response, taking a calming breath (huff) before continuing.

“I think we need to go back to the ship.”

And with _that_ , Clarke’s light and carefree morning comes to a resounding halt with her spoonful of oats freezing halfway to her mouth.

“You what?” Bellamy asks, even though she can feel his eyes on her dangling spoon and frozen stance.

“Look,” Raven starts, obviously having a five-point argument already laid out, “if we want to get that bunker opened, we’re going to need some heavy machinery. Where else are we going to find that? This’ll give us a chance to feel Zeke out and see if he was just bullshitting us. And if he’s not, the ship is loaded with mining equipment that will probably do the trick like _that_.” She snaps her fingers for emphasis, but Clarke doesn’t even hear it over the ringing that’s beginning in her ears.

_Keep them safe._

_Get them away from Eligius._

_Take them home._

The mantra that got her through the drive away from that goddamn ship yesterday pounds a steady beat in her head.

“And if he is?” She hears herself asking sharply, even though her mind feels staticky with panic, that blade against Madi’s skin flashing in her vision. “Bullshitting you, that is,” she clarifies, though she’s sure she probably doesn’t need to.

But she doesn’t care what they told her about the supposed “rebellion” on the ship – they threatened Madi, they threatened Bellamy, they threatened her friends, her _family_. She doesn’t care who this Zeke guy claims to be. He let her family be hurt.

“Then the ship is still loaded with mining equipment that we need,” Echo chimes in from the other side of the burned-out fire. “You said yourself that the bunker is buried in rubble impossible for us to move. If we want to get in that bunker, we need the tools to do it.” And Clarke wants to be mad at her, wants to target her anger at Echo for no other reason than that she can see Echo strategizing like the spy Clarke remembers. But she can’t, because deep down, she knows that they’re right.

 _“_ So what, we all just go back like we didn’t just escape from them yesterday?” Emori asks, thankfully being another voice of reason that Clarke could get behind.

Her eyes slide to Madi, whose singular focus is on her breakfast.

“No,” Bellamy says, and as Clarke turns to look at him, she finds his focus shifting from Madi, back to Raven and Echo. “If we go, it’ll just be a few of us. Me, Raven, and Echo should be able to feel out the situation to see what our next step is and–”

“And me,” Clarke cuts in firmly as she watches everyone still around her.

It’s Bellamy who she looks to, because she knows he’s going to be the one she needs to convince. “You, Raven, Echo, and me will head to the ship today and see if Eligius is worth trusting. Madi can stay here with Monty, Harper, Murphy, and Emori. You don’t have to stay _here_ here all day,” she adds with a glance at the others, “Madi can show you the nearby watering hole.” Her quick glimpse at Madi has her already looking back at Clarke, eyes warring with relief that she can stay in Eden, and worry that Clarke will still leave.

But she says it matter-of-fact, without any room for argument as her eyes leave Madi’s face to circle the faces of her friends, waiting to see if they’ll argue.

Murphy breaks the tension with a scrape of his spoon against his bowl.

“Well that settles that then,” he says around a spoonful of oats. “You deal with the criminals, and I’ll go swimming.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Os_ : Good  
>  _Toli os_ : Very good (I was looking for something along the lines of "great," but that was as close as I could get, lol..)


	40. 11 - What's with the box?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My assumption is the "box" they're referring to in the quote prompts was intended to be a wedding ring box.
> 
> (Spoiler alert: This is not a wedding ring box.)

“I don’t like this,” is what Madi tells her, voice serious, as soon as she has a moment alone with Clarke.

Clarke’s currently packing a bag with some food just in case the thousand and one terrible scenarios currently running through her head end up happening.

Clarke sighs in response, because she certainly doesn’t like it either, but if any of her friends are going back to that place, she’s sure as hell not going to let them do it without her.

“I know,” Clarke says, “but I know the terrain better than they do,” she reasons. “We can’t afford them getting lost out in the deserts or something,” she tries to joke. It falls flat. Especially when Madi’s stoic expression refuses to waver.

“I don’t get why anyone has to go back at all,” she goes on, voice going the slightest bit petulant.

“Because we need help getting the bunker opened. You know that we did as much as we could,” she reminds Madi. They hadn’t been to the bunker in a while because they had made as many piles of smaller rubble as they possibly could. She doesn’t think even having seven more people would be enough to move the chunks of debris that remain there. “And if they have the tools we need, then Raven and Echo are right. We need to figure out if we can use that as allies, or if we’ll have to figure out another way to use them.”

“A more violent way,” Madi mutters, which Clarke can't really argue with.

She swings the bag over her shoulder as she fully turns toward her daughter. She places her hands on Madi’s shoulders. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” is all she can say.

Madi’s level of violence solely comes from any training they do together and whatever hunting they do. Her shooting that man trying to hurt Bellamy yesterday and everything that happened with Vinson are anomalies that Clarke would prefer never to have to repeat.

“So you’ll be back by sundown?” Madi asks, toeing with the dirt on the ground instead of meeting Clarke’s gaze.

Clarke pulls Madi in for a tight hug that she returns ten-fold, as if her small arms alone could keep Clarke here.

“Sundown,” Clarke promises.

* * *

“What’s with the box?” Raven asks as she moves to hop into the back of the Rover.

Clarke had Madi help her haul the container out from storage before she headed out with the others to the watering hole with one more parting hug. The box is now residing in half of the room in the back of the vehicle.

Instead of responding, Clarke simply twists in her seat and stretches her arm into the back to pop the lid, revealing a majority of the weapons her and Madi have gathered over the years.

“Cool,” Raven says casually. “An arsenal is in the box,” she announces conversationally over her shoulder.

Echo follows in behind her, eyeing the guns and knives as well, picking up one of the blades to feel the weight of it. “Better safe than sorry, I suppose.” She tucks the knife into her clothes.

Clarke exchanges a look with both of them before turning back around in her seat as Bellamy swings open the passenger door.

“Ready?” He asks, turning around to see Raven and Echo continuing their dig through the weapons. His brows lift in surprise as he takes stock of everything she and Madi have found.

“As we’ll ever be,” she mutters before starting up the vehicle, her stomach feeling like it’s full of lead.

* * *

She slows down the Rover as the guards emerge into their line of sight.

The ship itself is hard to miss, but she refused to allow herself to waver in even the slightest. She only allows herself to press on the breaks when the guards appear right in front of them.

She watches Bellamy glance at the handgun Raven had passed to him during the ride. His expression mirrors the way Echo had looked with the knife, getting a feel for something he hasn’t had a need for in years.

It’s only a moment though, because then she feels the full force of his gaze on her, checking in with her silently in a way she was worried they might have lost.

She nods once back at him in response, which seems to be enough for him as he steps out of the Rover, taking the lead.

“Shaw said you might show back up,” one of the guards (soldiers? criminals?) calls, but Clarke’s more concerned with the guns dangling loosely in their hands.

“Yeah? So what’d he say to do if we did?” Raven snarks at them, moving to stand beside Bellamy, radiating challenge just as only Raven Reyes can.  

“To bring you to him,” the other one responds uninterestedly before turning to head back in the direction of the ship.

The four of them give each other a look before Bellamy shrugs, moving to follow.

That’s apparently all it takes to get Raven and Echo moving, but Clarke finds herself frozen for a moment as she watches them head toward their intended target – straight to the ship that held them as hostages. She glances back at the Rover momentarily, hoping it’ll be close enough if they need to make a quick escape or if someone gets injured or – she shakes off her thousand and one reasons before any of them can notice she’s lagging behind, and follows behind them, heading straight toward the belly of the beast.

Again.

* * *

Surprisingly, they end up walking through countless groups of people to get to the bottom of the ramp.

Clarke sticks close to Bellamy and the others, eyeing the area around her with distrust and a reluctant curiosity. Because as silent and reclusive as the ship looked yesterday when it had all but closed in on itself, today is its opposite as she eyes the people milling about all over the area, hauling boxes into piles and hiking tents up in the area just inside of the green land.

“Kind of reminds me of when we first came down,” Bellamy muses, glancing down at her with a knowing smirk, reminiscing back on times only the two of them would be able to recall.

And Clarke is loath to admit it, but he’s right – the place is alive in a way that reminds her of the dropship.

She just wishes the area was full of delinquents instead of hardened criminals.


	41. 53 - I'm flirting with you.

“Well look who decided to pop up,” a voice quips as soon as they enter into a room with a long table in the middle. A man leans on the opposite side of it looking nothing but amused.

She notes how neither Bellamy, Raven, nor Echo looks surprised to see him.

 _Shaw_ , the guards had said. This must be Zeke.

Clarke watches him move away from the table he was standing at, and with a jerk of his head, the men who had brought them in leave the room without a word so that just the five of them remain.

“You’ve taken to leadership quickly,” Raven notes with just enough of an edge that makes it questionable whether she meant it as approval or not.

“I’ve been leading the rebellion underground for a while,” he explains, eyes expressive in a way she wasn’t expecting from any of the people on this ship. His hands go up in a calming gesture like he knows what he’s getting into with Raven, which for some reason eases Clarke’s distrust just the slightest bit. “Now we don’t need to hide.”

“That would have been helpful when were locked in jail cells,” Echo cuts in sharper than Raven had.

To Zeke’s credit, he does look uncomfortable at that. “I did as much as I could to help you under the circumstances,” he reasons.

And then, his attention falls on Clarke.

Bellamy catches it immediately, clearly tilting his body closer to her. “This is–”

“Clarke,” Zeke says, and just like that, whatever calm was beginning to settle in her disappears as her hackles rise. Her friends visibly tense at the ease of her name rolling off Zeke’s tongue.

Zeke blinks wide-eyed, like he stumbled into accidentally slipping something and didn’t know it till now.

But all Clarke can focus on is that he _knows._

Without a shadow of a doubt, he so very clearly knows about the calls, and Clarke’s mind is already racing with how many more people here could possibly know about them.

“Funny you should mention that, _ally,”_ Bellamy adds the word at the end in a tone that does nothing to hide his own distrust, further proven as he moves to get even closer to Clarke.

It isn’t missed by the others either.

“I’m curious to know how the hell you could possibly haven known _that_ piece of information,” Bellamy continues in a threatening voice, deadly calm.

“Me too,” Raven practically growls, as if betrayed, stepping closer to Clarke as well.

Zeke’s eyes widen even more at her tone, but then they settle on Clarke again. She’s surprised she’s able to read the surprise and confusion in his eyes, like he made assumptions that he shouldn’t have.

Like he thought she already told them.

Like he can’t believe she hasn’t.

She quirks an eyebrow at him in response to his questioning look, daring him to tell them about the calls that he shouldn’t even know about.

Instead, he raises his hands in defense, much less casual than when he was trying to calm Raven.

“Doesn’t look like my story to tell,” he settles on as his eyes stay on her, and Clarke suddenly feels the stares of her friends on the side of her head in response, but she refuses to break her glare with Zeke. The implication is very clear on _whose_ story it is to tell.

“They say you’re an ally,” Clarkes speaks up for the first time, still able to feel the tension of Bellamy so close to her, but choosing to ignore it.

It does the trick, steering everyone’s attention away from suspicion about the calls. At least for now.

“Because I’d like to think that’s the truth,” Zeke responds, the sincerity in his tone a reprieve from his open confusion.

“Then we need your help with something,” Raven states, no room for argument as she picks up the threads of the conversation quickly.

Finally, Zeke’s attention leaves Clarke.

“Oh?” He asks, interest piqued as he turns to Raven.

“There’s a bunker full of people that are trapped with debris from the apocalypse,” Bellamy explains.

Clarke notes Zeke doesn’t seem the least bit surprised by the news. So does Bellamy, if the edge to his tone is anything to go by. She imagines his jaw ticking beneath his beard where she can’t see.

Still, he goes on. “We need equipment that can move the rubble out of the way and–”

“And you just so happen to have mining equipment that should do the trick,” Raven finishes.

Clarke watches Zeke nod his head, processing what they’re asking from him. “Alright,” he says, “done.”

The lack of hesitation has Clarke blinking in surprise.

“Just like that,” Raven says, suspicion clear.

“Just like that,” Zeke agrees, taking a step toward them. “I said I was your ally and I meant it. I would be more than willing to help, especially since I have a feeling Miss Clarke is going to be an indispensable resource about this beautiful green land moving forward.”

“Great,” Clarke says, thankful her overwhelming relief doesn’t bleed into her tone. “So when can we start?” She can worry about being an ‘indispensable resource’ after she sees her mom.

Her stomach does another summersault when Zeke raises a finger in response, looking every bit like someone who’s about to deliver a punchline. It reminds her of how Jasper would be when pulling a prank. “About that…”

Clarke’s body locks up with tension instantly, not having realized how much she had relaxed. She doesn’t have time for fucking jokes.

“About _what_ ,” Bellamy demands, his voice deadly and dangerous again – completely at odds with the soft tones he spoke by the fire last night.

To Zeke’s credit, he takes their continuous distrust in stride.

“It’s been a hundred years since those machines were running. It may take some time to get them functioning again,” he explains. “I sure could use a mechanic to help get them up and going again quicker,” he adds, voice full of faux-innocence as his eyes fall on Raven with what Clarke thinks is a playful smile.

“Is that your way of saying you want to spend more time with me?” Raven shoots back without skipping a beat, though her own lips quirk.

“Maybe,” he answers, and Clarke’s surprised he doesn’t finish the word with a wink. He’s very clearly radiating with ‘ _I’m flirting with you_ ’ vibes.

Raven’s smirk only widens, like the complete lack of hesitation was exactly what she was expecting.

Clarke clearly did not get the _full_ Eligius story from Raven last night around the fire.

There’s a pause following his honesty, giving Clarke more than enough time to start to panic right before Raven shrugs her shoulders in agreement. “Fine. I’ll get them up and running faster than any of your people could anyways.”

And the idea of leaving Raven here has Clarke’s throat closing up so quick that she can barely squeeze out, “ _Raven_.”

Raven looks back at her with understanding in her eyes. Clarke _just_ got her back. Raven can’t possibly expect Clarke to be willing to abandon her here.

“It’s okay, Clarke,” Raven assures her. “It’ll be no more than a few days, and then we’ll get to everyone in the bunker. Abby, Octavia, Kane, Miller, Jackson,” she lists off.

“And I’ll stay with her,” Echo adds, having stayed quiet through the whole exchange. But Clarke knows better than to think she wasn’t doing her own silent recon of the area as she still eyes the surroundings with a level of distrust that Clarke can relate to.

“Well then that settles it,” Zeke says. “The ladies here will radio as soon as Raven gets the machinery working and we’ll fly on over to your bunker to get the job done.”

Clarke dares to glance at Bellamy, whose jaw is still tight, but Clarke can see the acceptance in him. If this is what it takes for him to get to his sister, he seems to be willing to do it. “We need a radio then to be able to check in and get updates,” he finally says. “Clarke doesn’t have a working radio.”

Clarke feels her face burn immediately, eyes locking with Zeke in an instant. She wishes she wasn’t blushing through the glare she aims at him when he shoots her an amused, all-knowing smirk.

“Well then we’ll get Clarke a radio,” is all he says in response, but Clarke can feel the amusement radiating off of him in waves.

* * *

“Send updates every couple of hours, even if it’s just telling us that we’re idiots for worrying so much,” Bellamy tells Raven and Echo as he hugs them both goodbye. “And if we don’t hear from you, we’ll be coming with Clarke’s box of ammo to break you out.”

Raven rolls her eyes, even as Clarke watches her hug him firmly back in response. “We’ll be fine.”

“And if we’re not, we’ll call,” Echo assures him, clearly used to Bellamy’s worrying in a way Clarke hadn’t expected.

 _Six years changes a lot_ , she supposes.

Bellamy only shakes his head with a smile, before moving back to let Clarke say her own goodbyes. She hugs Echo first, telling her to be careful in a warning tone she thinks Echo reads. She nods back seriously, which gives Clarke the slightest sense of relief. She knows what she’s getting into.

When she gets to Raven, she feels her eyes burn with tears she refuses to let fall. Thankfully, Raven seems just about the same as Raven tugs her into a suffocating hug. “You and I are going to sit down and have an actual conversation the moment we’re back together,” she swears into Clarke’s neck.

Clarke chuckles, knowing any words she says will bring the tears. “As soon as you’re back,” she promises with a nod of her head. “I want to know everything that’s going on with this rebel leader of yours.”

Raven pulls back with a snort. “It’s nothing,” she says, but Clarke can see the red staining her cheeks.

“Nothing _yet_ ,” Clarke shoot back, reveling in being able to joke with her friend.

“Clarke?” Zeke calls as he stands near the table he was at when they first came in. “A word?”

Raven simply rolls her eyes, but she pulls Clarke in for one more quick hug before pushing her towards the rebel leader.

She watches Bellamy go back over to the girls, the three of them speaking in hushed tones as she makes her way over to Zeke.

Her apprehension increases the moment she sees that amused glint in his eyes again. “Your radio…,” he drawls, stretching his hand out to her when she’s close enough. She glances down to see a compact radio in his hand, much sleeker, and probably in far better condition than her radio that’s currently tucked under furs in her and Madi’s hut back in Eden.

“Thanks,” she says curtly, wanting to take the radio and avoid and further conversation with him. But as she pulls on the radio, his hand follows as his grip stays firmly in place.

Hers eyes meet his intense gaze.

“Only a few of us know,” he whispers in what Clarke thinks is his attempt at reassurance. “Diyoza is the one who first intercepted them, so McCreary and Vinson found out from her. And I let them use me as their lackey in order to get intel from time to time, so I ended up hearing most of them too. You took care of McCreary and Vinson yesterday, and you don’t have to worry about Diyoza. She’s not leaving her cell for a long, long time,” he swears.

It makes her stomach twist, but she also feels that same sense of relief – and possibly gratitude.

“Thank you,” she whispers, pulling the radio into her hands as he finally lets go.

Zeke steps back, his amused smirk still in place, but she can see the genuineness there too. She wants to believe this is the real Zeke Shaw, someone who could really be an ally for them. “Any time. But you should tell them. Or at least him. It’s obvious how much you care about each other.”

And if there was even a sliver of doubt that he truly _didn’t_ know about the calls, it’s gone. He knows who she made most of those calls to.

She turns her head to find Bellamy, and as if sensing her stare, he lifts his head up to meet her eyes.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” is all she can promise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm super salty about how Clarke and Raven's "reunion" went last night (among other things). So I will be continuing to write them caring about each other like _they should be doing_.


End file.
